Bug#109182: Removing more historical cruft

["Marcelo E. Magallon" <mmagallo@debian.org>]

>> Wichert Akkerman <wichert@wiggy.net> writes:

 > A normal user who runs ifconfig, route or mkfs? That's about as
 > likely as the pope suddenly switching to budaism.

 Since the first two's default behaviour is to *query*, and since no
 special privileges are needed in order to get a reply back, it's not
 *that* unlikely.  Even if the information is readly available
 elsewhere, those two programs are just handy query tools from a regular
 user's POV.  With one simple command a regular user can find how many
 interfaces, their type, their status, their capabilities, to some
 extent their trustworthyness[0] and their load ("the fsck, why is this
 network so slow today?").  mkfs is unlikely but not unthinkable, but it
 depends largely on local policy.

 Is there a vacancy at the Vatican now?

 [0] Sorry, I can't recall the proper English word

 PS: FWIW, before you bring up the "edit your PATH" argument, I *hate*
     having /sbin and cousins on my path as they are supposed to contain
     programs I can't use on non-privileged accounts and I hate writing
     aliases for the ones that are there but I can use to some extent.
     But the horse is dead, Jim.

-- 
Marcelo             | One day a tortoise will learn how to fly.
mmagallo@debian.org |         -- (Terry Pratchett, Small Gods)