rc init path question

[Brooks Davis]

On Mon, Aug 15, 2005 at 09:24:34AM -0600, Ken Gunderson wrote:
> Greets:
> 
> Not strictly amd64 related but I'm not subsribed to questions so here
> goes....
> 
> Why is PATH set so restrictively (e.g. PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/
> bin) by rc init?  Startup scripts in rc.d inherit this and seem to have
> difficulties finding things upon boot whereas running the script
> manually works fine since .cshrc has come into play by then.  Or am I
> totally missing something here.??

Predictability.  Those directories should in general contain only system
programs who's behavior should be what we expect.  Adding other
directories such as /usr/local/bin would complicate matters.  This means
you have to test slightly more carefully, but using full paths to
commands is good practice in general, particularly for system startup
scripts.

-- Brooks

-- 
Any statement of the form "X is the one, true Y" is FALSE.
PGP fingerprint 655D 519C 26A7 82E7 2529  9BF0 5D8E 8BE9 F238 1AD4
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 189 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-amd64/attachments/20050815/f8d3806b/attachment.bin