Re: of bash and ...sbin/
On Wed, Mar 22, 2000 at 11:50:10AM -0500, Jacob Kuntz wrote:
> Chad Miller (cmiller@surfsouth.com) wrote:
> >
> > I like that debian's bash package has different paths for users
> > and the superuser, but it's caused me to question ideas behind the
> > placement of some programs in 'sbin' directories.
> >
> > For instance, a program joeuser uses often is 'traceroute' (which is
> > in /usr/sbin). Other (questionable) ones might be /usr/sbin/fbset
> > or /usr/sbin/lpc .
>
> not to mention ifconfig! having these utils in the non-root path
> is hardly a security risk. if anything, this is just to keep down
> helpdesk calls like "what does MAKEDEV do?" personally, since many of
> these commands print out usefull, non-security-risking data, i don't
> see any good reason to keep em out.
we've had this flamewar before, only a few months ago.
just add "/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin" to your $PATH and be done
with it. it only takes a few seconds (do it in /etc/profile if you want)
and it doesn't risk breaking existing scripts.
many scripts (both debian scripts and local sysadmin scripts) make use
of ping, traceroute, ifconfig and others in the sbin directories. it is
common practice to specify the full path to sbin binaries to avoid any
potential problems with the PATH being different in different contexts
(e.g. login shell vs cron environment vs su or sudo environment). moving
these programs to different directories will break those scripts.
the minimal benefit of moving them is greatly outweighed by the damage
it would cause.
in short, add the sbin directories to your PATH and move on.
craig
--
craig sanders
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