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Re: /etc/profile should include sbin in PATH



Greg Stark <gsstark@MIT.EDU> writes:

> The original purpose was to provide a place for binaries like system daemons
> which lived in /etc to live. The FHS is very clear that the intent is that
> people should _not_ have to add those directories to their paths, so we are
> prohibited from putting anything there that a user might find useful.

You have muddled two things together, in an apparent attempt to pull
the wool over our eyes.

/etc used to contain programs of two sorts: system daemons, and
superuser commands.  It contained, for example, telnetd, mount, and
ifconfig.

Berkeley decided to split these binaries into two places; sbin and
libexec, with sbin getting the ones like mount and ifconfig, and
libexec getting telnetd and friends.  libexec did not catch on as
widely as sbin; some systems still put the daemons in etc.

Thomas


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