/etc/init.d in the default $PATH ?

Peter Gordon peter at thecodergeek.com
Sun Jan 28 18:57:20 UTC 2007


On Sun, 2007-01-28 at 09:18 -0500, kodis at mail630.gsfc.nasa.gov wrote:
> The only two reasons that I recall for maintaining the status quo are
> that including sbin could confuse non-admins, and that including sbin
> could interfere with the operation of the consolehelper program which
> is used to fire off the system-config-* programs.  The first objection
> doesn't seem very compelling, and the second seems like it could be
> resolved without much difficulty.
> 
> -- John Kodis.
> 

Straight from the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard, version 2.3 (emphasis
mine):

"/sbin : System binaries
Purpose
Utilities used for system administration (and other *root-only*
commands) are stored in /sbin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/local/sbin. /sbin
contains binaries essential for booting, restoring, recovering, and/or
repairing the system in addition to the binaries in /bin. [...]"

The /sbin/ (and /usr/sbin, et al.) stuff is specifically meant for
administrative utilities. Having it in a user's PATH makes no sense when
they are not meant to use these. And, if they *are* meant to use them,
then it's likely that they need at least limited root privileges, so
sudo or something similar should be configured for the purpose, not
merely some PATH munging.

-- 
Peter Gordon (codergeek42) / FSF Associate Member #5015
GnuPG Public Key ID: 0xFFC19479 / Fingerprint:
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Blog: http://thecodergeek.com/blog/ 
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