Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Seth Alan Woolley <seth AT positivism.org>]

On Fri, Mar 18, 2005 at 06:37:29PM -0500, Geoffrey Derber wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-03-18 at 18:49 +0100, Arjan Bouter wrote:
> 
> > This also is not a bug. This is a security measure. Root's profile 
> > can/should be
> > different from that of normal users. For example root can have /sbin in 
> > $PATH
> > which normal users shouldn't need and to minimize the risk of a 
> > non-functional
> > root account things like bash-completion and other stuff which installs in
> > /etc/profile.d shouldn't be in root's profile. By installing a normal 
> > file 
> > instead of a link you make sure lazy admins don't use /etc/profile 
> > instead of
> > their own.
> 
> If we are considering the security risk, shouldn't the /sbin directories
> be removed from /etc/profile?  In which case we'd also probably want to
> move 'gaze' to /usr/bin or something like that.

This has nothing to do with security.  /sbin/gaze works even when PATH 
doesn't have /sbin/.  PATH is only a convenience.

/etc/profile.d shouldn't be picked up automatically by the root account, 
though, that is a good point.  I prefer my root account prompt to be 
totally different than user accounts, too, for example (more than just 
$/#).

Seth

-- 
Seth Alan Woolley [seth at positivism.org], SPAM/UCE is unauthorized
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