Date: Sun, 27 Feb 2000 17:04:45 -0500 (EST) From: Robert Watson <robert@cyrus.watson.org> To: freebsd-current@freebsd.org Subject: 4.0: default path when su'd Message-ID: <Pine.NEB.3.96L.1000227165347.5881F-100000@fledge.watson.org>
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While trying to explain to someone how to run ping, I noticed that by default, we exclude /sbin and /usr/sbin (etc) from the normal user path. There are various arguments as to whether that is a good idea or not (especially given that ping and md5 are both in /sbin...?), but my current observation is that if you su to root, you don't get /sbin or /usr/sbin in the path. This is because those directories are added to the root path by .login, which doesn't run with su called normally. The obvious fixes would be to rearrange the dot files in ~root some (.cshrc instead of .login -- don't know what the appropriate change for /bin/sh would be), or to add those directories to the global path configured in login.conf so that it would work regardless of the shell in use. Whatever the solution, I'd like it to be in place before we cut 4.0--as much as I enjoy teaching people about the vaguarities of different shells and environmental variables when they install their first box, I'd rather not. I'd also rather not modify the files on every box I install, as there is a reasonable and common convenience factor. Also, if we're going to keep excluding /sbin, etc, from the normal user path, we should consider moving a few of the things in /sbin and /usr/sbin into /bin and /usr/bin respectively. For example, md5 is sufficiently useful for all users that having it in the default user path would be a good idea. Ping is also a common ``where's that'' among my users, etc. Neither of these requires privilege, and both are useful for generic users. There are probably a couple of others that fall into that category. Robert N M Watson robert@fledge.watson.org http://www.watson.org/~robert/ PGP key fingerprint: AF B5 5F FF A6 4A 79 37 ED 5F 55 E9 58 04 6A B1 TIS Labs at Network Associates, Safeport Network Services To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-current" in the body of the message
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