[813] in Release_7.7_team
Re: Agenda for 1/9
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg Hudson)
Thu Jan 9 18:19:02 1997
To: Craig Fields <cfields@MIT.EDU>
Cc: jhawk@MIT.EDU, release-team@MIT.EDU
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 09 Jan 1997 20:27:55 GMT."
<199701092027.UAA02476@mad-scientist.MIT.EDU>
Date: Thu, 09 Jan 1997 18:18:53 EST
From: Greg Hudson <ghudson@MIT.EDU>
Having been involved in filesystem standardization efforts, I think
I'm more or less clear on the reason why some binaries are put into
directories like /etc, /usr/etc, /sbin, and /usr/sbin, which on most
operating systems are not in the users' default path. The one and
only reason is to separate binaries useful to non-root users from
binaries which are not.
Unfortunately, this distinction is almost always poorly maintained.
Even when it was stated explicitly, in the Linux filesystem standard,
that binaries which might ever be run by normal users should not go in
/sbin or /usr/sbin, they would regularly standardize the location of
programs like sendmail as /usr/sbin/sendmail, despite the usefulness
of sendmail to non-root users.
>> The operating system ships with these programs, users should be
>> able to use them with minimal inconvenience.
> I don't find adding something to my path to be inconvenient.
When it becomes very inconvenient is when it comes time to recommend
that a user run a program, and having it be in a different place on
each Athena platform and not in the path. Certainly, the vast
majority of users will never be in the position of having this program
recommended to them, but it's still a real pain.
The reasons I don't like the /usr/athena/bin/ping symlink idea:
* It handles just this one case, when there are other marginal
cases to be handled and others might crop up in the future.
* Users might come to rely on the path /usr/athena/bin/ping;
that is, I don't want to create a support commitment to a
particular pathname.
I really think there is pretty much zero cost to adding the system
binary directories to the default user path. The release team agreed
with me this morning, so it will be up to Craig to change their minds.
