zlacker

>>taubek+(OP)
I once sent out a proposal on the FreeBSD lists to merge /sbin with /bin, and /usr/sbin with /usr/bin. People were concerned that this would slow down the system, due to PATH lookups taking longer. Even when I demonstrated the opposite was true (it being faster due to fewer directories needing to be scanned), I wasn't able to get consensus. What a shame.

>>EdScho+Oa
For me, the value in having a bin vs sbin split is in keeping system binaries (daemons, root-only tools) off the user's path. There's little value in a user starting inetd or apache2 from the command line, so why should those be present in the user's path? Same thing for system management tools that require root access for everything, such as dmsetup, blkdiscard, or shutdown (yes, Linux examples as I don't know FreeBSD).

Having only usable binaries in the path aids discoverability of the system.

>>tremon+Jj
> so why should those be present in the user's path

And why shouldn't they?

It's not as if a user could do anything damaging with them, if the system is setup properly.

> Having only usable binaries in the path aids discoverability of the system.

Except when someone new has to go online to ask "I found this tutorial telling me to use the `xyz` command to do this, but all I get is `bash: xyz: command not found`, please help!"