Darren Moffat wrote:

[snip]

> The default installation lists only those dirs (/usr/sbin:/usr/bin) root
> needs to run the admin tools shipped with the system. root doesn't need
> to run stuff from /usr/openwin/bin and /usr/dt/bin (or at least not
> regularly enough that they should be in your path.

[snip]

> Was this a general question or was there a particular program that
> you needed to use that wasn't in root's path ?

This is not precisely on the topic, but it reminds me about something
I've always wondered...

Why is /sbin not in root's default path? And if I add it (since it
should always be local and only contains administrative commands that
seems reasonable) should it go before or after /usr/sbin? I wonder
since,

  $ ls /sbin /usr/sbin | sort | uniq -d
  autopush
  fdisk
  hostconfig
  ifconfig
  init
  mount
  mountall
  sync
  uadmin
  umount
  umountall

The two overlap on some very important commands, and accept for [u]mountall
and fdisk, they are not the same. Are the /usr/sbin ones wrappers? They all
look smaller.

But /sbin does contain a couple of commands that /usr/sbin does not,

  $ ls /sbin > /tmp/ls.sbin
  $ ls /usr/sbin | diff - /tmp/ls.sbin | grep '>'
> bpgetfile
> dhcpagent
> dhcpinfo
> jsh
> rc0
> rc1
> rc2
> rc3
> rc5
> rc6
> rcS
> sh
> soconfig
> su
> su.static
> sulogin
> swapadd
> uname

The most interesting ones being uname, which again has a smaller different
companion in /usr/bin (not /usr/sbin), and su (which is a symlink to
/usr/bin) and su.static.

My guess is that there are hysterical raisins for all of this, but it
all seems a bit confusing to the uninitiated having the same command
in different locations.

--
Crist J. Clark                                Network Security Engineer
crist.clarkglobalstar.com                    Globalstar, L.P.
(408) 933-4387                                FAX: (408) 933-4926
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