[Xen-devel] Re: xm dmesg output

[Horms <horms@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Ian Pratt <m+Ian.Pratt@xxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> 
>> Speaking of "xm dmesg", because xm is in /usr/sbin, it 
>> implies that a normal user wouldn't normally need to run it.
>> 
>> However, xm provides several informational commands, dmesg 
>> being just one of them.  And, since the normal dmesg is in 
>> /bin, it might make sense to have them available in /usr/bin as well.
>> 
>> However, this could just be done with a shell script wrapper. 
>>  Would such a patch be accepted?
> 
> Having a wrapper to make xm available in /usr/sbin/ and /usr/bin seems
> pretty gross. It should be in one or the other, but I'm willing to
> accept it may currently be in the wrong one. Let's see if anyone has a
> strong opinion...

As I understand the way that sbin vs bin is supposed to work,
sbin is for commands that can only ever be executed by root.
And make no sense to be invoked by a normal user. The idea
being that administrative commands can be moved out of bin
to avoid cluttering users' paths. However, if commands that
users might want to access are in sbin, then users tend
to put sbin in their path so they can see them, thus negating
much of the benifit of the bin/sbin split.

So in short, if xm has a mode of invocation that makes sense for
non-root users, it should be in bin so both root and non-root users
see it without having to fiddle their paths.

-- 
Horms


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