Bug 4242

Summary: ifconfig should be in the user's path
Product: [Build System, Metadata & Runtime] OE-Core Reporter: Darren Hart <dvhart>
Component: coreAssignee: Saul Wold <sgw>
Status: RESOLVED NOTABUG QA Contact:
Severity: normal    
Priority: Undecided CC: bluelightning, meta.mr.watcher, meta.watcher, richard.purdie
Version: 1.4   
Target Milestone: ---   
Hardware: x86   
OS: Multiple   
Whiteboard:
OS type for building Yocto: --- Type of Regression: ---
Verified: Documentation change: ---

Description Darren Hart 2013-04-10 19:14:59 UTC 
Build Configuration:
BB_VERSION        = "1.17.1"
BUILD_SYS         = "x86_64-linux"
NATIVELSBSTRING   = "Ubuntu-11.10"
TARGET_SYS        = "i586-poky-linux"
MACHINE           = "atom-pc"
DISTRO            = "poky"
DISTRO_VERSION    = "1.3+snapshot-20130410"
TUNE_FEATURES     = "m32 core2"
TARGET_FPU        = ""
meta-yocto        
meta-yocto-bsp    
meta              = "master:c31721e6372a52f8dfc516173e18f62266ac461f"
meta-kernel-dev   = "master:9df95d49188bacbe180bfac67edfaa682d542ed3"


Running as xuser the ifconfig binary is not in the users path. It should be.
Comment 1 Paul Eggleton 2013-04-11 10:38:37 UTC 
This is perhaps debatable since it is in /sbin - different distros handle this differently. CentOS (and therefore presumably RHEL) don't do this for example.
Comment 2 Richard Purdie 2013-04-11 11:34:33 UTC 
Agreed, this is highly debatable and not common place on most desktop systems these days so I don't think this is actually a bug. Its installed into sbin and we shouldn't put sbin in the user's path. Obviously the user can still get to them if needed.
Comment 3 Darren Hart 2013-04-11 15:30:20 UTC 
What do you include in "most desktop systems" Richard? It is in my path on Fedora 18, Ubuntu 11.10, and Ubuntu 12.04. I would expect that to cover most Linux desktop systems. I could boot the VMs for OpenSuse and test that....

If you want to ignore it OK, but the logic presented for doing so here doesn't appear to hold up to even moderate scrutiny.
Comment 4 Richard Purdie 2013-04-11 15:52:59 UTC 
I'm not imagining this according to goodle, for example, http://askubuntu.com/questions/134641/why-do-i-have-to-be-root-to-run-the-command-ifconfig

however it seems some systems have this and some do not. I'm having trouble figuring out if this was something they did and then change back or what exactly happened. Google suggests Fedora didn't have /sbin in PATH either at some point too.

So perhaps most desktop distros tried this, then swicthed back but it was certainly the impression I'd had in my mind.
Comment 6 Darren Hart 2013-04-11 16:19:25 UTC 
OK, thanks for the references. Those will be good to have recorded here in the bug in case someone else reports this as an issue.