On Wed, 16 Aug 2000, Anthony Towns wrote: > FHS discuss people: where should traceroute go? Tradition dictates > /usr/sbin, the FHS seems to indicate /usr/bin would be more > appropriate.
> [analysis] IMHO, the deciding factor should be whether traceroute is installed setuid root. If traceroute is *not* installed setuid, then normal users cannot do anything useful with it except perhaps get usage information (which is already covered in the man page). Therefore, putting a non-setuid traceroute binary in /usr/bin is pointless; it should go in /usr/sbin because it is only useful to root. If traceroute *is* installed setuid, then implicitly, it is intended for non-root users to run. Otherwise, there would be no need to install it setuid. Therefore, if a setuid traceroute binary exists on the system, it should be in /usr/bin. I suppose one could argue that a setuid traceroute binary could be intended for non-root system accounts to run (i.e., still not be intended for all regular users), but personally, I think that would be a stretch. -- James Ralston, Information Technology Software Engineering Institute Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA