touch-packages team mailing list archive

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson <1435492@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Johannes,

My own feeling is that Ubuntu doesn't distinguish as strictly between
bin and sbin as you would like to see. This is the standard $PATH in the
default /etc/environment:

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games"

Possibly it can be justified by the fact that the root user is not
enabled by default in a fresh Ubuntu install, but you are encouraged to
use sudo when needed. After all, running stuff in sbin as a normal user
don't typically do much harm, right?

Anyway, I think that some experienced developer should better comment on
your objection.

The easiest ways to fix it for yourself are to either not dropping /sbin
from $PATH in ~/.bashrc or prevent ~/.profile from sourcing ~/.bashrc.

-- 
You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu
Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to upstart in Ubuntu.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1435492

Title:
  Xsession.d script assumes that /sbin is in $PATH

Status in upstart package in Ubuntu:
  Fix Committed

Bug description:
  According to changelog.Debian from version 1.12.3 on lightdm is using
  "bash for the session to improve error handling" to fix #678421.

  Unfortunately this can break the session start up when the user sets
  the $PATH environment variable in ~/.bashrc. Then /sbin might no
  longer be in $PATH and /etc/X11/Xsession.d/99cadence-session-start
  won't find /sbin/upstart when calling "upstart --user"

  The mechanism is the following:

  1. /usr/sbin/lightdm-session lines 37-42 source among others
  ~/.profile

  2. The usual .profile of /etc/skel will source ~/.bashrc if the shell
  is Bash (and not /bin/sh)

  3. ~/.bashrc (maybe) is setting $PATH without /sbin

  4. upstart --user call fails as /sbin is not in $PATH

  Suggested solutions:

  * switch back to /bin/sh

  * make sure that /sbin is in $PATH

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