[Bug 863] New: su specification about PATH is not clear and not followed by distributors

[email protected]
Newsgroups gmane.linux.lsb.specification
Message-ID <[email protected]>
The current spec has the following for the su command: 
 
"The current environment is passed to the new shell. The value of  
 $PATH is reset to /bin:/usr/bin for normal users,    
 or /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin for the super user. This may be changed 
 with the ENV_PATH and ENV_SUPATH definitions in /etc/login.defs. When using 
 the -m or -p options, the user's environment is not changed." 
 
I have some problems with that: 
1. It is not clear if only "su -" will reset the PATH, or a simple "su", too. 
   The last case would be contradict to the behavior on all other systems. 
2. No Linux distributions uses this paths, all modify them to adjust the  
   path to the needs of the distribution. 
3. No big Linux vendor is using /etc/login.defs for su. 
4. The shadow author is thinking about and working on removing /etc/login.defs 
   and unify it with the other tools and some UNIX systems to use 
   /etc/default/<command>. 
5. I don't think we should hardcode the PATH in LSB (there are always good     
   reasons to expand it) and were the default is stored.   
 
--    
Configure bugmail: http://bugs.linuxbase.org/userprefs.cgi?tab=email   
------- You are receiving this mail because: -------
You are the assignee for the bug, or are watching the assignee.
lmpx.com only provides a reader for public news (NNTP) servers. It is not affiliated with the servers or forums shown here and is not responsible for the content of articles, which is written by their respective authors.