Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: rfc: adding sbin directories to PATH for all users

[Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>]

On 26/11/2015 17:03, Duncan wrote:
> Kristian Fiskerstrand posted on Wed, 25 Nov 2015 21:15:37 +0100 as
> excerpted:
> 
>> On 11/25/2015 09:16 PM, Mike Gilbert wrote:
>>> On Wed, Nov 25, 2015 at 2:23 PM, Michał Górny <mgorny@gentoo.org>
>>> wrote:
>>>> On Wed, 25 Nov 2015 11:18:34 -0800 Daniel Campbell <zlg@gentoo.org>
>>>> wrote:
>>>>> Maybe I'm missing something, but `df` is in /bin. Do you use
>>>>> something else to determine free space?
>>>>
>>>> btrfs fi df
>>>
>>> In thins case, upstream's build system installs everything in bindir,
>>> which I override to /sbin. I think that's where the ebuild was
>>> installing things when I inherited it from the previous maintainer.
>>>
>>> If William's PATH proposal is not implemented, I would be happy to move
>>> it all to /bin if so desired. Just file a bug.
>>
>> If moving it in the first place, wouldn't it go to /usr/bin as not being
>> essential to system?
> 
> It's essential to system, as btrfs device scan is needed before mounting 
> a multi-device btrfs, and btrfs check is a an fsck that may be needed to 
> fix a broken btrfs /usr/ mount.
> 
> Else reiserfsck, e2fsck, fsck itself, and others, should be in /usr/sbin, 
> not in /sbin/.
> 
> btrfs is the general userspace binary.  Subcommands such as check and 
> device scan require device privs and don't normally work when run as 
> ordinary users, but some subcommands such as filesystem df don't need 
> device privs and work just fine when run as ordinary users.
> 
> (Not that I particularly care about the topic of the thread in general, 
> as here: /sbin -> bin, /usr -> ., so all four locations, /bin, /sbin,
> /usr/bin, /usr/sbin, point to the same single /bin, and I no longer have 
> to worry about which dir something's in, unless I'm checking the 
> canonical path as installed by the package, for which equery belongs 
> works nicely.  But I'm a btrs user and upstream btrfs list regular so I 
> care about that angle, thus this reply. =:^)


Picking a random (i.e. most recent) post to reply to.

I don't really care what the default PATH is, I always set it to my
liking anyway. I understand all the historical arguments but I don't
think they matter too much these days anymore as times and OSes do change.

I feel that the / vs /usr split is rather pointless on modern systems,
but I do like the bin vs sbin split because it makes my life easier
(which is the entire point of any env var when you think about it). When
working as a user I'd rather not have my tab completion results
cluttered with apps I have to be root to use properly.

I vote to leave things as they are, and I also vote for showing people
who don;t like it how to change $PATH

-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan.mckinnon@gmail.com