Re: [gentoo-dev] newsitem: baselayout 2.5 changes

[Mike Gilbert <floppym@gentoo.org>]

On Thu, Feb 8, 2018 at 3:41 PM, Ulrich Mueller <ulm@gentoo.org> wrote:
>>>>>> On Thu, 8 Feb 2018, Mike Gilbert wrote:
>
>> Eliminating ROOTPATH seems like a significant change. Was this
>> officially discussed somewhere that I missed?
>
>> I actually support the change, but other people should be given the
>> chance to complain about it on the record.
>
> It contradicts the FHS, which says that /sbin contains "root-only
> commands" and that "ordinary users should not have to place any of the
> sbin directories in their path." [1]

That would be fine if we actually followed the recommendation
mentioned in the first half of that footnote.

"Deciding what things go into "sbin" directories is simple: if a
normal (not a system administrator) user will ever run it directly,
then it must be placed in one of the "bin" directories."

However, there are plenty of examples of commands that normal users
may run from sbin. Moving these commands often causes problems for
packages that either hard code absolute paths, or detect paths at
build time. I think it would be less disruptive to add sbin to PATH
than it would be to try and "fix" all the packages that install
commands in the wrong place.