Feature changed by: Ludwig Nussel (lnussel) Feature #310311, revision 11 Title: Unify default PATH openSUSE-11.4: Unconfirmed Priority Requester: Important + openSUSE Distribution: Unconfirmed + Priority + Requester: Important Requested by: Ludwig Nussel (lnussel) Partner organization: openSUSE.org Description: The default PATH settings for root and normal users are inconsistent at various places in the distribution: glibc - /usr/include/paths.h: #define _PATH_DEFPATH "/usr/bin:/bin" #define _PATH_STDPATH "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin" coreutils - /etc/default/su: PATH=/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin SUPATH=/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin coreutils - /bin/su: #define DEFAULT_LOGIN_PATH "/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin: /usr/X11R6/bin" #define DEFAULT_ROOT_LOGIN_PATH "/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/X11R6/bin" pwdutils - /etc/login.defs: ENV_PATH /usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin ENV_ROOTPATH /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin aaa_base - /etc/profile and /etc/csh.login PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:$PATH sudo: --with-secure-path=/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/X11R6/bin ... and probably many more ... The default PATH setting should be made consistent across all tools. Discussion: #1: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2010-08-15 19:16:36) Certainly. Many administrator-level tools (that are in sbin) are also executable and meaningful to a user - like /sbin/ip. The two groups should have the same base PATH. #2: Jan Matejek (matejcik) (2010-08-23 19:21:55) (reply to #1) most administrator-level tools that are meaningful to users are already symlinked to 'bin' - my guess is that if there is a tool that is not symlinked, that is a bug of the current solution, not a conceptual problem #3: Georg Müller (georgmueller) (2010-08-24 18:30:39) (reply to #1) modinfo and tcpdump (e.g. use it to read from a file) are just two of them. I could search for more of them... #4: Juergen Weigert (jnweiger) (2010-08-25 16:26:13) How about looking at the opposite list: Are there any admin-level tools that must not (or should not) be in a user's PATH? #5: Jan Engelhardt (jengelh) (2010-08-31 02:56:03) (reply to #4) Well it seems like a good idea that users do not have their time wasted in tab completion by tools they can definitely not be used as an unprivileged user, or tools where it does not make sense (like /sbin/init). I also think that tools that are normally not run as a user (sshd, apache) should remain in sbin, even if they can be configured, tricked and abused to run on an unprivileged configuration. -- openSUSE Feature: https://features.opensuse.org/310311