On 5/6/06, jeff <moe(a)blagblagblag.org> wrote:
Chris Tyler wrote:
> The /sbin and /usr/sbin directories contain many utilities that are
> useful to non-superusers, such as ifconfig, netstat, arp, fuser, lsusb,
> runlevel, dumpe2fs, hwclock, lsof, traceroute, and many others.
> Obviously, most of those utilities can do -more- when run as superuser,
> but that doesn't diminish their value to mortals.
I once asked about this wrt `ifconfig` in #fedora and got lashed as if I
asked for mp3 support or something...
I believe the correct answer is not to add sbin to users' paths, but to
move binaries out of sbin and into bin and symlink them so they don't
break old scripts. By my reading, this is what the FHS implies, but
there is lots of inertia to such a change.
/sbin: "Utilities used for system administration (and other root-only
commands) are stored in /sbin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/local/sbin."
http://www.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html#PURPOSE16
The 'and' in that sentance is probably incorrect as in (or other
root-only commands). Many of the commands listed in the original
email:
ifconfig, netstat, arp, fuser, lsusb, runlevel, dumpe2fs, hwclock,
lsof, traceroute,
are considered classical system administration commands. The standard
user is not supposed to have any need to use any of them. [In the
sense that if they are using them they are doing system
administraction duties and probably should know what they are doing.]
In some environments letting regular users is highly frowned on or
disallowed (I have had to write a script that basically did a chmod
o-rwx /usr/sbin/* to meet certain security policies). In other
environments.. the exact opposite is the required. The current layout
is sort of the middle ground in my opinion.
--
Stephen J Smoogen.
CSIRT/Linux System Administrator