Re: horse carcas flogging (was: traceroute in /usr/bin, not /usr/sbin)
On Tue, Jun 26, 2001 at 02:41:59AM -0400, Brent Verner wrote:
> On 25 Jun 2001 at 23:25 (-0700), Adam McKenna wrote:
> | If one accepts your definition of what programs might be run by normal users,
> | then we might as well move all of sbin into bin, because a normal user might
> | run any of those programs out of "curiosity".
>
> and those progs which should rightly live in (usr)?/sbin would be found
> very quickly by the 'curious' to be of little to no use, and would quiclky
> retire back into the 'unused by normal users' category. Yes, this issue
> can be _s_t_r_e_t_c_h_e_d_ out of proportion, but the reality still
> exists that traceroute provides the _exact_ same utility, AFAIK, to a
> non-priviliged user as it does the root user, so why would one (have
> or want to) gain root permissions to type '$ traceroute'?
They don't. They just have to add it to their PATH. As I said before,
I am personally in favor of keeping as many suid binaries as possible away
from untrusted users, i.e.:
adam@sunfish:~$ ls -l `which traceroute`
-rwsr-x--- 1 root adm 35652 Jan 5 2000 /usr/sbin/traceroute
-- but I realize that this is not practical as a vendor default.
> I think the wording of that paragraph of the fhs sums up the whole
> issue very succinctly, and without prescribing the location of
> every known program, does a pretty good job of giving the guidance
> to allow FHS compliant systems to be of maximal utility.
Then we agree. The FHS leaves the interpretation up to the distributor. If
we, as the distributor, feel that traceroute should go into /usr/sbin, then
we are compliant.
--Adam
--
Adam McKenna <adam@debian.org> <adam@flounder.net>
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