On 5/6/06, jeff <moe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 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 -- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
