On Sun, 18 Apr 1999, Anthony Towns wrote: > Note: dpkg -i fails with the following warning: > ] dpkg: `ldconfig' not found on PATH. > ] dpkg: `start-stop-daemon' not found on PATH. > ] dpkg: `install-info' not found on PATH. > ] dpkg: `update-rc.d' not found on PATH. > > These are in /sbin, /sbin, /usr/sbin and /usr/sbin respectively. So this > proposal doesn't help the sysadmin who doesn't have /sbin or /usr/sbin in > his path install .deb's.
Assume that they were installed fine and PATH was changed after the installation. > This proposal also doesn't help the user who changes any of the other > environment variables in ways that programs don't like -- eg adding things > to the PATH and having inetd run something unexpected [0], or having a > machine adminned by local and remote users with different TZ settings and > having services restart in the wrong timezone, and so on. I have to agree, and as such, I'll bounce the ball back into your court and ask you to improve my proposal (or make a separate one) that will solve the different TZ settings or whatever other problems you mentioned. Essentially, my proposal is trying to solve one problem, and one problem only -- the inability to reach a certain program because the PATH has been changed/deleted/whatever. The solution to that is adding a simple PATH line that appends whatever PATH that particular script may need to the current PATH set in the environment. Does it hurt anything? I've yet to see anybody point out to me that it does. Does it help? Well, sure, it CAN help. Maybe not everybody, but there's certainly a good number of users out there that it can help. Does it ruin any standardization that we have now? No, because right now the only standard there is for this is the lack of one -- and some scripts (my last message lists them as quoted from someone else) have implemented PATH lines that overwrite what's currently there (which is bad behavior) and the rest have nothing. > root needs to have a very simple, standard setup (essentially exactly as > init(8) sets things up). If it doesn't things break. That's life. [1] Agreed -- but there's no reason not to insert another measely line into all scripts to make sure that if somebody does play with that little area that we prevent things from breaking. What's wrong with that? -- Brock Rozen [EMAIL PROTECTED] Director of Technical Services (410)358-9800 Project Genesis http://www.torah.org/