Re: mkfs and fsck in /sbin
On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 09:26:04AM -0500, Richard Kreuter wrote:
> On Sat, Nov 09, 2002 at 12:24:59PM +0100, Robert Millan wrote:
> >
> > On the GNU system it will be usual for normal users to create
> > and maintain their own filesystems, typicaly on removable media.
> >
> > Hence they need mkfs, fsck and other filesystem-related utilities
> > available in the /bin directory instead of /sbin.
>
> It might be desirable to have these utilities available in both /bin
> and /sbin, so programs that hard-code pathnames don't break. Symlinks
> would suffice, right?
If a program hard-codes /sbin it means that it's being run as normal
user (without /sbin in PATH) but still needs that utility. so it's
just a workaround for the problem which is the lack of the utility
in users' PATH.
So when the problem is fixed, the workaround of hard-coding /sbin is
not necessary anymore and has to be removed sooner or later. In my
opinion setting symlinks is not a good idea because it prevents us
from spotting buggy scripts and fixing them. I guess the debian-devel
people wouldn't like to set symlinks either.
--
Robert Millan
"5 years from now everyone will be running
free GNU on their 200 MIPS, 64M SPARCstation-5"
Andrew S. Tanenbaum, 30 Jan 1992
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