Gene Heskett wrote: > On Wednesday 05 April 2006 11:18, Jon LaBadie wrote: >> <anything>/"s"bin is supposed to contain programs of interest to >> "systems accounts", not to ordinary users. Thus they would not >> be in an ordinary users PATH by default because those users would >> not look to execute them. > > So thats why its called Sbin. I always thought it was supposed to be > Scriptbin in the *nix lingo. >
Originally sbin was static bin, i.e., programs that were statically linked so as not to require share libraries that may or may not exist if in single-user mode with no filesystems mounted besides /. Older OSs had many of the same programs in both /bin and /sbin, so that you could take advantage of shared libraries with the /bin version under normal operation, but still be able to run the /sbin version for recovery purposes. For example, a Solaris 8 box here has a 7k /bin/uname and also a 210k /sbin/uname. I think the definitions have evolved over time, and you may or may not be able to run everything in /sbin on any particular system without having additional shared libraries available. Frank -- Frank Smith [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sr. Systems Administrator Voice: 512-374-4673 Hoover's Online Fax: 512-374-4501
