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

[Chuck Anderson]

On Sat, May 06, 2006 at 03:40:14PM -0400, Chris Tyler wrote:
> Here's my question: Why don't we take that 'if' in the
> default /etc/profile, so those directories are in everyone's (default)
> PATH?

I admit that have the sbin directories in my path, but it does 
actually cause a problem in a few cases, one being consolehelper.  
e.g. ethereal uses consolehelper to request the root password for more 
functionality, but only for /usr/bin/ethereal, not /usr/sbin/ethereal:

-rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 1437856 Apr 25 11:20 /usr/sbin/ethereal
lrwxrwxrwx  1 root root 13 Apr 27 05:52 /usr/bin/ethereal -> consolehelper

If I just type "ethereal" and execute the copy in /usr/sbin as a 
normal user, then I never get prompted and I cannot use the features 
that require root privs, such as capturing packets.