/sbin:/usr/sbin in mortal's PATH

[Horst von Brand]

jeff <moe at blagblagblag.org> wrote:
> Chris Tyler wrote:
> > The /sbin and /usr/sbin directories contain many utilities that are
> > useful to non-superusers, such as ifconfig, netstat, arp, fuser, lsusb,
> > runlevel, dumpe2fs, hwclock, lsof, traceroute, and many others.
> > Obviously, most of those utilities can do -more- when run as superuser,
> > but that doesn't diminish their value to mortals.

[...]

> I believe the correct answer is not to add sbin to users' paths, but
> to move binaries out of sbin  and into bin and symlink them so they
> don't break old scripts. By my reading, this is what the FHS implies,
> but there is lots of inertia to such a change.

> /sbin: "Utilities used for system administration (and other root-only
> commands) are stored in /sbin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/local/sbin."
> http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#PURPOSE16
> 
> Note "root-only"

Note "system administration"...

> /usr/sbin:  "This directory contains any non-essential binaries used
> exclusively by the system administrator"
> http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#PURPOSE25
> 
> Note "EXCLUSIVELY"

Probably an overstatement.

> For this reason a few years ago `traceroute` was moved out of sbin.
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18313

That is sensible. But ifconfig(8) is not for luser consumption, and so are
lots of others.

If you do want them, go /sbin/ifconfig etc.
-- 
Dr. Horst H. von Brand                   User #22616 counter.li.org
Departamento de Informatica                     Fono: +56 32 654431
Universidad Tecnica Federico Santa Maria              +56 32 654239
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