On Wednesday 01 October 2008, Ville Skyttä wrote:
> On Wednesday 01 October 2008, Matthew Miller wrote:
> > On Tue, Sep 30, 2008 at 08:52:10PM -0600, Stephen John Smoogen wrote:
> > > I think the chance for putting it back is still there.. if someone is
> > > willing to do the work on the hard but correct way? I think it was
> > > crickets the last couple of times when volunteers were asked for that.
> >
> > Sure, I'm willing to work on it.
>
> Count me in, too.

So... what can we do in order to make this happen? Now that we have
volunteers, I suppose the best way forward would be to revert the change for
F-10 and start working on "the correct way" so that the default PATH wouldn't
need to be changed again in F-11.

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On Sun, 2008-10-05 at 21:54 +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:
> So... what can we do in order to make this happen? Now that we have
> volunteers, I suppose the best way forward would be to revert the change for
> F-10 and start working on "the correct way" so that the default PATH wouldn't
> need to be changed again in F-11.

Do you really need to revert the current change just to work on
something better? Why can't the something better be worked on, and we
could move to something better when it's ready. In the mean time, we
can continue to use the current setting.

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On Monday 06 October 2008, Jesse Keating wrote:
> On Sun, 2008-10-05 at 21:54 +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:
> > So... what can we do in order to make this happen? Now that we have
> > volunteers, I suppose the best way forward would be to revert the change
> > for F-10 and start working on "the correct way" so that the default PATH
> > wouldn't need to be changed again in F-11.
>
> Do you really need to revert the current change just to work on
> something better? Why can't the something better be worked on, and we
> could move to something better when it's ready. In the mean time, we
> can continue to use the current setting.

It _can_ be done without reverting the current setting, but I think it's much,
_much_ worse than not reverting. After thinking about it a bit more, up to
the point where I most likely wouldn't be interested in helping out with it
any more.

If we work from a setup where */sbin are not in the default PATH, we only have
to worry about existing full paths to executables we think should be in PATH
in order to not cause regressions, most likely by providing compatibility
symlinks or wrappers. This way, work done results in incremental
improvements.

If on the other hand */sbin are in the default PATH when we start the work, in
addition to full paths and the compat symlinks/wrappers, we need to worry
about the default PATH as well. This is a problem because what we want to
achieve is PATH which is kept clean of things that are not useful to have
there, but now we can no longer remove them from it because doing so would
inevitably break everything that has learned to expect these to be in PATH,
or to use a full non-sbin path to it. This way, work done accomplishes
practically nothing (actually, we'd be making things worse by leaving behind
a forest of compat symlinks/wrappers that shouldn't have existed in the first
place), or we are generating regressions as we proceed.

So, I think not reverting the current setting compared to reverting it results
in more work, harder work, worse results, and generally unnecessary default
PATH churn (which in addition to the above is especially bad for things
outside our control, such as /usr/local/sbin) between distro releases.

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On Mon, 2008-10-06 at 20:51 +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:

> If we work from a setup where */sbin are not in the default PATH, we only have
> to worry about existing full paths to executables we think should be in PATH
> in order to not cause regressions, most likely by providing compatibility
> symlinks or wrappers. This way, work done results in incremental
> improvements.

We already _had_ this discussion, just providing a few symlinks from
sbin to bin isn't a good solution. Please read the thread from May.

> This is a problem because what we want to
> achieve is PATH which is kept clean of things that are not useful to have
> there

Again, read the thread from May, deciding which things only "normal"
people want in the path to keep it "clean" is very non-trivial.
Apparently Matthew doesn't want firstboot in his path, that's nice ...
but what about if someone else does want it, do we start voting, for
each binary?

If we are going to decide that Fedora can't even manage to change the
PATH to include sbin¹ without 100 people painting the bikeshed different
colours, so be it ... but please, please, please, don't let everyone
paint the thing for the next N years.


¹ And, yes, I've always hacked /etc/profile on every box I've used to
make sbin be part of the path, I'm obviously far from alone, but meh.

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On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 10:22:08PM -0400, James Antill wrote:
> If we are going to decide that Fedora can't even manage to change the
> PATH to include sbin¹ without 100 people painting the bikeshed different
> colours, so be it ... but please, please, please, don't let everyone
> paint the thing for the next N years.

Awesome. Accusing-people-of-bikeshed painting again. It's like tne Godwin's
Law of Fedora Devel or something. You get to be all snarky sounding and
dismissive at the same time. "Ooooh, the people who don't agree with me are
BIKESHED PAINTING! Zing!"

I've been actually working (not as a top priority, but still) on this "shed"
for quite a long time -- see the sudo bug referenced earlier (the key piece
in my mind), but also things like bug #18313.

So, if you insist on using the analogy: I'm sorry a buncha hooligans came
and painted graffiti all over the bikeshed. I'd like to put it back to its
former utilitarian finish even if it's a bit ugly, then from there you can
argue about colors all you like while we slowly actually get it into shape.


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On Mon, Oct 06, 2008 at 10:22:08PM -0400, James Antill wrote:
> Apparently Matthew doesn't want firstboot in his path, that's nice ...
> but what about if someone else does want it, do we start voting, for
> each binary?

And speaking of bikeshed painting. If you can't even bother to inform
yourself about your simple example, then you're really not contributing to
the discussion in any way. The answer to your rhetorical question is simple:
*no one* wants firstboot in their path:

$ /usr/sbin/firstboot
firstboot ERROR: You must be root to run firstboot.

That can pretty much stand in analogy for the entire rest of whatever you
had to say.

No, we don't start voting. We put things where it's sensible. That's usually
incredibly obvious, and where it's a more difficult case, we make a decision
based on a reasonable policy. Like with, say, "does it even work as
non-root" as one element. Crazy talk, I know, but there you have it.

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On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:36 PM, Matthew Miller <mattdm@mattdm.org> wrote:

> Awesome. Accusing-people-of-bikeshed painting again. It's like tne Godwin's
> Law of Fedora Devel or something. You get to be all snarky sounding and
> dismissive at the same time. "Ooooh, the people who don't agree with me are
> BIKESHED PAINTING! Zing!"

I really don't think so. This is painting the bike shed more than any
other thread in recent memory. I don't personally use the term that
often, and had been avoiding weighing in on this thread for precisely
that reason, but this has now gone too far. We already decided the
color of the bike shed, and it's blue. Reference below:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SteeringCommittee/Meeting-20080820

The proper time to voice objections to this would have been there, 6
weeks ago now.

> So, if you insist on using the analogy: I'm sorry a buncha hooligans came
> and painted graffiti all over the bikeshed. I'd like to put it back to its
> former utilitarian finish even if it's a bit ugly, then from there you can
> argue about colors all you like while we slowly actually get it into shape.

Again, if you insist on using the analogy, then this particular
bikeshed is currently in good repair and very attractive.

To make it clear, I'm 110% in favor of this feature, as are a number
of people, Let me explain why.

1) I've been admin'ing Linux (and Solaris, in the interest of full
disclosure, and occasionally some AIX or HP-UX thrown in for good
measure) boxen in some form for about 10 years now. One of the first
things that I do in my user profile is to put these exact directories
in my PATH. It makes my job easier. This particular reasoning is not
good enough

2) I support alot of newbie users. Let me try and explain this in a
format that everyone will understand:

<new_user> OMG, ifconfig doesn't work, it's not installed!
<helper> you have to be root to do that.
<new_user> I am
<helper> how did you obtain root?
<new_user> why, su of course!
<helper> you need to type su -
<new_user> why's that?
<helper> because 'su -' gives you a login shell
<new_user> but I'm already logged in, do I need to open another window
or something?
<helper> no, just trust me here
<new_user> all this Linux stuff is just too complicated
* new_user has quit: installing Vista

If you think that nearly this exact interaction doesn't happen on a
daily basis, feel free to join #fedora and I'm sure one of the nice
folks there will inform you (I see it in #rhel where I help out all
the time).

So yes, this feature is necessary in order to make the distro more
accessible to new users. For the small minority that don't agree with
this change, it's highly likely that you know what you're doing and
are using puppet or something similar, and can revert the change
locally with a trivial amount of effort.

In regard to the point in your second mail, are there commands that
only root can execute in those locations? Absolutely. Have I
personally ever entered a command that can only be executed as root as
a normal user? Almost daily. Simple enough to press the home key and
type sudo in front of them.

And to belabor the point even more, are there commands in the CURRENT
default path that can't be executed by normal users? You better
believe it! Following is from my F8 system:

$ ping -f 192.168.1.1
PING 192.168.1.1 (192.168.1.1) 56(84) bytes of data.
ping: cannot flood; minimal interval, allowed for user, is 200ms
$

Following your reasoning, I propose we move ping to /sbin. Not a very
sound course of reasoning, is it?

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On Tuesday 07 October 2008, James Antill wrote:
> On Mon, 2008-10-06 at 20:51 +0300, Ville Skyttä wrote:
> > If we work from a setup where */sbin are not in the default PATH, we only
> > have to worry about existing full paths to executables we think should be
> > in PATH in order to not cause regressions, most likely by providing
> > compatibility symlinks or wrappers. This way, work done results in
> > incremental improvements.
>
> We already _had_ this discussion, just providing a few symlinks from
> sbin to bin isn't a good solution. Please read the thread from May.

I have read the "Adding /sbin and /usr/sbin to everyone's path in F10" thread
from April, not sure if that's what you mean but apart from one message I
didn't find a related thread from May. In the April thread I see several
people advocating the symlink approach, and some people having reservations
about it, most of whom seem to be hesitant about the amount of work involved
in general with doing this right (ie. not the symlinking per se), and one or
two who dismissed symlinking without providing any rationale. If I missed
something, please provide exact pointers.

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On 07.10.2008 07:25, Jon Stanley wrote:

On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 11:36 PM, Matthew Miller <mattdm@mattdm.org> wrote:


Awesome. Accusing-people-of-bikeshed painting again. It's like tne Godwin's
Law of Fedora Devel or something. You get to be all snarky sounding and
dismissive at the same time. "Ooooh, the people who don't agree with me are
BIKESHED PAINTING! Zing!"


I really don't think so. This is painting the bike shed more than any
other thread in recent memory. I don't personally use the term that
often, and had been avoiding weighing in on this thread for precisely
that reason, but this has now gone too far. We already decided the
color of the bike shed, and it's blue. Reference below:

https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Extras/SteeringCommittee/Meeting-20080820

The proper time to voice objections to this would have been there, 6
weeks ago now.


Afaics and iirc it was announced just 24 hours before the meeting in
question that the sbin feature is going to be discussed:

https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-devel-list/2008-August/msg00806.html

Do you consider that enough time to voice objections? I don't. But
that's IMHO not a problem in our workflow, as we afaics always can make
adjustments even when things got decided.


And it would definitely not the first time that features or improvements
need to be adjusted or even reverted once the majority of users get
aware of them in a beta. That's normal and shooting those discussion
down with "The proper time to voice objections to this would have been
there, 6 weeks ago now." is not going to bring Fedora forward.


CU
knurd

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Thorsten Leemhuis <fedora@leemhuis.info> writes:

> Afaics and iirc it was announced just 24 hours before the meeting in
> question that the sbin feature is going to be discussed:

Perhaps, Fedora should get a fishing and agrarian committee where things
can be accepted which were declined in previous discussions.


Enrico

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