Re: rhwas 5 work?

R P Herrold wrote:
> 
> Two lines of code permit a person ignorant of PATH
changes to reach 
> their ill-advised desire;

But giving root a different and confusingly different
environment was a 
late and unique branch in history.  And unnecessary.

> altering the operating system, so that the 
> minimal tools needed for recovery from the single '/'
partition would be 
> a massive and pervasive changed, and a serious loss. 
It is a fool's 
> errand to do so; it has proved a debating society's
pigsty to wallow in.

When small disk drives cost $10,000 and most machines could
only be 
booted from the vendor-suppied device, there was a reason to
care if you 
could boot from a tiny partition.  That reason is long gone
but...

That's not the change being discussed.  It is more about
combining /sbin 
with /bin and /usr/sbin with /usr/bin - or simply giving
everyone the 
same PATH.  There is no sensible reason that a user should
wonder why he 
can't run ifconfig to get his IP address, or that root
shouldn't be able 
to find fdisk if he used 'su' instead of 'su -' to get
there.

> Discarding culture, ignoring history, and faddishly
taking away 
> strengths to 'gain share' is the way of vendors and
those with an agenda 
> to grind; and not the way of those who live in the Unix
culture who need 
> to work in a long lived stable environment.

You should look at the whole history before saying that. 
You'll find 
that adding the /sbin and /usr/sbin directories was the
faddish move in 
Solaris, probably because they didn't trust their
dynamic-linked 
programs and put static-linked utilities there to help
recover from 
possible problems.  I'm not sure who had the bright idea of
supplying 
different environments to root compared to other users, but
I'd bet it 
didn't come from the original and elegantly simple unix
versions, and it 
doesn't play well with the current best practice advice to
only switch 
to root when needed.   Aside from the PATH nonsense,
consider what 
happens when someone is accustomed to the aliases only in
root's 
environment accidentally does 'su' instead of 'su -', and
wonders why rm 
didn't ask if he really wanted to do that.

If you want people to learn to use unix usefully, you have
to expose its 
simplicity consistently, not disguise it differently under
different 
circumstances.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
    lesmikesellgmail.com


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Les Mikesell wrote:
> R P Herrold wrote:
>>
>> Two lines of code permit a person ignorant of PATH
changes to reach 
>> their ill-advised desire;
> 
> But giving root a different and confusingly different
environment was a 
> late and unique branch in history.  And unnecessary.
> 
>> altering the operating system, so that the minimal
tools needed for 
>> recovery from the single '/' partition would be a
massive and 
>> pervasive changed, and a serious loss.  It is a
fool's errand to do 
>> so; it has proved a debating society's pigsty to
wallow in.
> 
> When small disk drives cost $10,000 and most machines
could only be 
> booted from the vendor-suppied device, there was a
reason to care if you 
> could boot from a tiny partition.  That reason is long
gone but...
> 
> That's not the change being discussed.  It is more
about combining /sbin 
> with /bin and /usr/sbin with /usr/bin - or simply
giving everyone the 
> same PATH.  There is no sensible reason that a user
should wonder why he 
> can't run ifconfig to get his IP address, or that root
shouldn't be able 
> to find fdisk if he used 'su' instead of 'su -' to get
there.
> 
>> Discarding culture, ignoring history, and faddishly
taking away 
>> strengths to 'gain share' is the way of vendors and
those with an 
>> agenda to grind; and not the way of those who live
in the Unix culture 
>> who need to work in a long lived stable
environment.
> 
> You should look at the whole history before saying
that.  You'll find 
> that adding the /sbin and /usr/sbin directories was the
faddish move in 
> Solaris, probably because they didn't trust their
dynamic-linked 
> programs and put static-linked utilities there to help
recover from 
> possible problems.  I'm not sure who had the bright
idea of supplying 
> different environments to root compared to other users,
but I'd bet it 
> didn't come from the original and elegantly simple unix
versions, and it 
> doesn't play well with the current best practice advice
to only switch 
> to root when needed.   Aside from the PATH nonsense,
consider what 
> happens when someone is accustomed to the aliases only
in root's 
> environment accidentally does 'su' instead of 'su -',
and wonders why rm 
> didn't ask if he really wanted to do that.
> 
> If you want people to learn to use unix usefully, you
have to expose its 
> simplicity consistently, not disguise it differently
under different 
> circumstances.
> 

What the hell does this have to do with anything remotely
relating to 
CentOS.

There is an FHS, almost all UNIX variants use it ... there
is a reason 
for root to have a different path than normal users.

This is the document:
http://w
ww.pathname.com/fhs/pub/fhs-2.3.html

If you want the standards changed, there are working groups
to get it 
changed ... this is NOT one of those working groups.

Please take traffic concerning how screwed up the FHS is and
how it is 
an old standard for an old time to the appropriate place.

If the FHS changes and removes /sbin and/or if the
recommended paths 
change, then will change UNIX wide.  I can guarantee that if
that 
happens, CentOS will also change.  I can also guarantee that
as long as 
things stay the way they are, it is silly to discuss these
changes on 
this thread.

Thanks,
Johnny Hughes


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