Re: /etc/profile should include sbin in PATH
In article <[🔎] 19991219215736.A26960@dnd.utwente.nl> you wrote:
> Although it doesn't say that the ordinary users must not have the sbin
> directories in their PATH, it explicitly states that they should not have
> to. The difference between bin and sbin is that the latter contain binaries
> _mostly_ used for administration tasks only. Which leads to the conclusion
> that there is no reason (FHS-wise) to include them in everyone's PATH.
If you assume that everyone who does things as root does them by acquiring a
different environment, what you say is completely correct.
In most shops I'm aware of, the more widely accepted behavior is that users
log in as themselves and acquire transient superuser privs as necessary using
sudo, or super, or something like that. In this model, the expected situation
is that everything one might want to execute as either root or non-root is
always in the PATH, and what you can actually run is controlled by permissions.
I, too, find myself adding /usr/sbin:/sbin to PATH in every Debian
/etc/profile I get near...
Bdale
Reply to: