Adding /sbin and /usr/sbin to everyone's path in F10

Casey Dahlin cjdahlin at ncsu.edu
Wed Apr 23 19:21:40 UTC 2008


Axel Thimm wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 11:30:31AM -0400, Tom spot Callaway wrote:
>   
>> I propose that we add /sbin and /usr/sbin to the path for normal users
>> (as well as root) for F10? There are plenty of useful tools in there for
>> non-root users (ifconfig, fdisk, parted), and IMHO, any tool which
>> assumes the user is root because it lives in /sbin is fundamentally
>> broken. The LSB doesn't mandate this (at least, not anywhere I can see),
>> so I propose that we just do it.
>>
>> Anyone opposed to such an action?
>>     
>
> As many people already noted there are some reasons to hide them away
> from "normal" users. Effectively you suggest setting sbindir to
> bindir, e.g. why have /sbin, /usr/sbin at all if all PATHs point to
> both sbin/bin so that there is no split?
>
> So the argument is not about PATH, but about having the split in the
> first place.
>
> If a command is considered often called by users why not put a symlink
> to bindir instead?
>
> $ ls /sbin| wc -l;ls /usr/sbin| wc -l 
> 312
> 486
>
>   
Is it really better to keep the rest out of the way though? Consider a 
user who is told to run a given set of commands, but forgets that he 
must do it as root. Isn't the average command's "permission denied" 
message better than "command not found?" The latter is confusing, and 
can cause panic in a user who (as often happens) has no idea how to use 
the terminal and is simply following a set of instructions he was told 
would give him results.

--CJD




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