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From: Rainer Weikusat <rweikusat@talktalk.net>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.programmer
Subject: Re: Default PATH setting - reduce to something more sensible?
Date: Sun, 19 Jan 2025 20:36:21 +0000
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Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> writes:
> On 16.01.2025 12:51, Rainer Weikusat wrote:
>> Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com> writes:
>>>
>>> Essentially there were two questions I had that I can reformulate in a
>>> more compact form as
>>>
>>>   "Why, in the first place, are all these path components
>>>    part of the default PATH for ordinary users? - Is there
>>>    any [functional] rationale or necessity for that?"
>> 
>> Because someone thinks that all these locations should be searched for
>> commands in the order specified. Eg, the point of the lightdm entry is
>> very likely to enable lightdm to 'override' arbitrary user commands by
>> making sure that the shell will find lightdm-commands of the same name
>> first.
>
> That's a thought that I had as well. But upon reconsideration I thought
> that it wouldn't be necessary to _export_ that path component into the
> user environment.

How else is it supposed to affect/ benefit users¹?

¹ According to the changelog of the Debian lightdm package, a 'gdm
flexiserver' script used to to be included with lightdm until 2014 and
the PATH addition was needed by that. Now, 2014 is 11 years ago. Maybe,
a software update could help?

[...]

>>>   "_If_ many of the default PATH components are unnecessary,
>>>    where and how to best reduce these settings to a sensible
>>>    subset? - Without spoiling the system, of course."
>> 
>> As already written above: They are part of PATH because someone thinks
>> that's sensible. Whether or not they're necessary in a certain situation
>> is an entirely different question. If you want to work out empirically
>> what's "necessary" for you, remove them all and add directories to the
>> default PATH one-by-one as the need arises.
>
> Well, I have a clear idea what I need and what is necessary. Since I
> cannot remove that 'lightdm' thing I may just define the PATH anew in
> my (shell-)environment.

You absolutely can removed the lightdm path entry. That's going to be
set during session or shell initialization, ie, either from some file
used by pam_nev (=> pam_env(7)) or in a shell initialization script (for
bournlike-shells, /etc/profile and /etc/profile.d).

>> OTOH, what's the point? My flat contains more light switches than I
>> actually need, with some of them being (as far as I could determine)
>> entirely blind/ connected to lamps I don't use and some of them being
>> redundant because they switch lamps on or off which can also be switched
>> on or off with another light switch. But as they're just sitting on the
>> wall and removing them would require work, I haven't even considered
>> doing so.
>
> That are different things. The switches are put in advance at places
> that are reasonable. And you wouldn't put a switch below the WC, I'm
> sure (read: "WC" ~ 'lightdm').

I have a switch next to my garden door which does nothing. I think
that's most unreasonable because I sometimes press it because of
mistakenly believing it should turn the bedroom lamp on. I then usually
remember this when the lamp fails to turn on (or off).