>>"Joey" == Joey Hess <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>> As to mount telling us what is mounted, so does df, and cat
>> /etc/mtab. again, not enough to move mount; unless one is being
>> contrary.
Joey> I dont follow this. 'echo *' can tell me what files are in a directory;
Joey> a system without ls in path is still broken.
You are missing the point. The point is not that if *any*
arcane alternative exists we should move a program out of /bin; the
pooint is that if a progrom in sbin has a usage that a normal user
_may_ find interesting is not enough reason to move it out of sbin,
espescially if there are other mehtods of accomplishing the same
using programs already in /bin.
Joey> I don't see how mount is much different. Regular users *often*
Joey> want to mount/unmount/check mount status of removable
Joey> media. And it's in /bin now, so isn't this a red herring
Joey> anyway?
We are trying to determine rationale, and thus even things
that are in their appropriate place in the file system are fair game
for analysis. The point I was making is that trying to find mounted
file systems is not the reason to move mount out of /sbin. The user
mountable removeable media, on the other hand, is an excellent
reasdon, and thus mount is in /bin.
The /bin vs /sbin distinction is purely about avoiding
inconvenience and/or confusion for the normal user. The sole thing
accomplished by putting some things in /sbin rather than /bin is that
if you don't put /sbin in your path, you won't see those things. I
myself, probably like most people on this list, rarely notice the
distinction since I do have /sbin and /usr/sbin in my path. But the
idea is that the average user won't have /sbin or /usr/sbin in their
path, and so the programs in those directories can have simple names
for the convenience of those who do use them, without an average user
either accidentally running one because it has a simple name they
confused with something else, or getting a lot of confusing
possibilities in a command completion list.
The things that we do put in /sbin, for the same reasons, we
expect that the average user will not use them and might be confused
by encountering them. For example, mkfs and fsck and so forth are in
/sbin. Anyone can use these, on a file or on a device they have
permissions for. It's not that we expect only root to use these, but
that we expect anyone who wanted to use them to probably know enough
about the system to be root (or at least enough more than the average
user that they can handle putting /sbin in their path).
manoj
--
The sooner all the animals are extinct, the sooner we'll find their
money. Ed Bluestone
Manoj Srivastava <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <http://www.debian.org/%7Esrivasta/>
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