On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 11:18 AM, Lubomir Kundrak <lkundrak(a)redhat.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2008-04-23 at 17:01 +0100, Richard W.M. Jones wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 23, 2008 at 07:53:04PM +0400, Dmitry Butskoy wrote:
> > Tom "spot" Callaway wrote:
> >> I propose that we add /sbin and /usr/sbin to the path for normal users
> >> (as well as root) for F10? There are plenty of useful tools in there for
> >> non-root users (ifconfig, fdisk, parted), and IMHO, any tool which
> >> assumes the user is root because it lives in /sbin is fundamentally
> >> broken.
> >
> > Perhaps the initial ancient UNIX idea was to isolate unprivileged users
> > from commands which they cannot run. IOW, to avoid a situation "I've
> > discovered that there is a command, but why I have no rights to run it?"
:)
>
> AFAIK the /sbin split was done around the late 80s. First saw it in
> SunOS. Old (V7 etc.) versions of Unix just had /bin and /usr/bin.
Yep, but it had the administrative commands in /etc. Unless I am
wrong, /sbin was a new home for them to separate them from configuration
files.
That is my recollection also. It was not in v7 but was in SysV for
the reason you listed. I think SunOS-1 still had a lot of binaries in
/etc. SunOS-2 was completely SysV and moved the items into /sbin,
/bin. One idea was that service binaries could be protected by chmod
etc out of the main path-views so even putting /sbin:/usr/sbin would
not help a non-root user start up their own telnetd on port 9999.
[selinux on the real cheap.]
--
Stephen J Smoogen. -- CSIRT/Linux System Administrator
How far that little candle throws his beams! So shines a good deed
in a naughty world. = Shakespeare. "The Merchant of Venice"