Re: Intent To Split: netbase
On Thu, Aug 17, 2000 at 02:38:55AM -0500, Branden Robinson wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 17, 2000 at 03:27:12AM -0400, Adam McKenna wrote:
> > Any user who has a legitimate reason to run ifconfig is a system
> > administrator, and thus should have /sbin and /usr/sbin in his path.
>
> Facilities like /etc/login.defs do discriminate to this fine degree.
Do you mean, "do not discriminate"?
> They know two kinds of user, the ordinary kind and root.
>
> They set the path accordingly.
It's called .bash_profile.
> With growing attention on capabilities, et al, are we going to tell all
> Debian users that we only support system administrators who have root?
> This seems short-sighted and contrary to trends in Unix system
> administration.
Branden, you have a fantastic ability for rewording other people's
statements.
I suppose we should tell Debian users that only users who know how to modify
their PATH will be able to run binaries in /sbin and /usr/sbin without typing
the full path.
> > A user who is running ifconfig out of curiosity is not a systems
> > administrator, and does not need to have it in his path.
>
> How do you define curiosity? Running commands at random, or trying to
> diagnose a problem so as to send an intelligent problem report to the
> responsible personnel?
I don't want anyone who doesn't know how to modify his path troubleshooting
a system I admin. They're likely to misdiagnose the problem, overreact to
the problem, or perhaps even assume a problem where none exists. At an old
job, we once had a user complaining that his network wasn't working because
he couldn't ping www.microsoft.com, not knowing that microsoft blocks ICMP
echo requests.
--Adam
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