Bug#374525: [Pkg-shadow-devel] Bug#374525: Bug#366546: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender

[Christian Perrier]

> That's up to you; we don't consider it a system utility, that's all.
> 
> Our hier(7) is pretty clear, and we try to stick to it:
> 
>      /bin/      user utilities fundamental to both single-user and
> 		multi-user environments
> 
>      /sbin/     system programs and administration utilities fundamental
> 		to both single-user and multi-user environments

As a first reaction and as one of the shadow maintainer, I'm now
inclined to agree with the choice of the FreeBSD team here.

The rationale is clear...

I'd like to hear the one from OpenBSD to put nologin in /sbin
though.. they might have a different definition of what goes in /sbin

However, others might have a different point of view in Debian and I'd
like to get all possible advices. I might even consider asking our
Technical Commitee after a discussion in debian-devel (which I don't
put much hope in based on past experience).

In short, let's take a deep breath and think about all this.

The standard we have to comply with in Debian is the FHS 2.3, from the
policy. It states:


/bin : Essential user command binaries (for use by all users)

/bin contains commands that may be used by both the system
administrator and by users, but which are required when no other
filesystems are mounted (e.g. in single user mode). It may also
contain commands which are used indirectly by scripts.

/sbin : System binaries

Utilities used for system administration (and other root-only
commands) are stored in /sbin, /usr/sbin, and /usr/local/sbin. /sbin
contains binaries essential for booting, restoring, recovering, and/or
repairing the system in addition to the binaries in /bin. [18]
Programs executed after /usr is known to be mounted (when there are no
problems) are generally placed into /usr/sbin. Locally-installed
system administration programs should be placed into
/usr/local/sbin. [19]

The question then shortens down to "will we need nologin when /usr is
not mounted". Do we have existing or future use cases?


PS: let's shorten down the CC list of these mails. My own point here is to
decide what to do in Debian so we might want to stop bothering FreeBSD
developers (which I took the opportunity to sy "hi" to....I have some
good old friends over there).



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