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

Enrico Scholz enrico.scholz at informatik.tu-chemnitz.de
Wed Apr 23 16:22:57 UTC 2008


"Tom \"spot\" Callaway" <tcallawa at redhat.com> writes:

>> > I propose that we add /sbin and /usr/sbin to the path for normal users
>> > ...
>> > Anyone opposed to such an action?
>> 
>> /me
>
> Your thorough and elaborately explained reasoning has concisely shown me
> the errors in my proposal. Thank you for taking the time to reply to my
> email with such useful and important information.

ok; let me more verbose:

1. such changes require a good reason; direct reachability of a fistful
   of programs is not a good reason. There are side effects (console
   helper, other programs relying on traditional $PATH) which are not
   handled in your proposition.

2. 80-90% of programs under */sbin are without any use for normal
   users; mentioned 'ifconfig' + 'route' are called by normal users
   for diagnostic reasons only. This assumes some adminstrative
   knowledge including awareness about the special /sbin paths.

3. tab-completion will show me a lot of new programs which are for zero
   use. This will slow down my work.

4. problems which are tried to be solved can be handled much better at
   other places (e.g. modify 'sudo' to search in */sbin, or link commonly
   used programs to */bin)


Enrico




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