Date: Tue, 24 Apr 2001 19:25:47 -0500 From: David Kelly <dkelly@hiwaay.net> To: David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: How Is The FeeBSD OS Like and Different Than Say Redhat or Suse LINUX Message-ID: <200104250025.f3P0Pl396790@grumpy.dyndns.org> In-Reply-To: Message from David Scheidt <dscheidt@tumbolia.com> of "Tue, 24 Apr 2001 09:28:20 CDT." <Pine.BSF.4.21.0104240849330.97832-100000@shell-1.enteract.com>
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David Scheidt writes: > On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, David Kelly wrote: > > :As for home-grown or self-ported apps, they belong in ~/bin. Anyone who > :has had to use a Unix system w/o the root password knows this. As a > :sysadmin I've had to beat this into a number of luser's heads over the > :years. *I* keep my personal stuff in ~/bin, and I'm the only user on > :most of my FreeBSD systems. > > That depends. If you've got local application that useful for multiple > people, or for the administration of the box, it belongs in /usr/local. > It's non-sensical to have backup scripts in ~david/bin. The random scripts > that make my life easier, like my nethack cheating scripts, certainly belong > in ~/bin. Users are always saying, "I need the root password because..." If you are a SysAdmin then you get lots of practice saying NO! Probably the all time lamest excuse I've ever heard was from one who was writing in Fortran, Irix 3.3.3, and needed to read a serial port. First I heard of it was the order from above, "Give this user root." Cornered the boss to discuss the issues and learned the reason was, "so he can read the serial port." Normally users don't mess with serial devices so I had them locked down. Explained this, and how it meant the user did *not* need root and the boss was happy. For a week. Luser came back demanding not only root but that I tell him "where the uarts are." He was trying to peek/poke 8250 UART registers from Fortran on an SGI workstation and wanted root? In the end I had to write his serial routines and show him how to use them. If an application is useful for multiple people and the decision is made to make it available to all, then its for the SysAdmin to install it where ever he/she damn well pleases. In the process, a good SysAdmin will stash a copy somewhere with notes as to whatever special it took to get that application installed and working. Many applications are not intended to be shared with all users on a system. It is very common for, say, a CFD guru, to open a directory within his home directory, containing his applications which others may find useful. Those who what to us it often add this directory to their own PATH environment variable. I was always happy for users to share applications this way. Was one less thing for me to fuss with. But when introducing new users to my systems made sure they understood the significance of the search order in their path, and why the dot directory was not there by default. Projects typically had their own filesystems. Opened to write by the project group. And left to the project to manage their resources. Once again this is the right place to put their applications, not /usr/local/, not /usr/bin/ More than once, on systems that were not mine, I've had gcc, kermit, emacs, gawk, ... all compiled into my own ~/bin, ~/man, ~/lib. Had a heck of a time once when a SysAdmin had altered the system's default path so PATRAN was searched first. PATRAN's split utility was *not* the one I wanted. From then on I've hard coded my path. -- David Kelly N4HHE, dkelly@hiwaay.net ===================================================================== The human mind ordinarily operates at only ten percent of its capacity -- the rest is overhead for the operating system. To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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