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From: Janis Papanagnou <janis_papanagnou+ng@hotmail.com>
Newsgroups: comp.unix.shell
Subject: Re: Default PATH setting - reduce to something more sensible?
Date: Mon, 20 Jan 2025 09:46:47 +0100
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On 20.01.2025 09:05, Wayne wrote:
> On 1/14/2025 8:55 AM, Dan Cross wrote:
>> ... It seems to me that, as a normal user, the PATH
>>> (and with it the path-search) could be drastically reduced. Is there
>>> a method to only have them in the PATH when 'sudo'ing any programs
>>> that require root privileges and the privileged programs in 'sbin'?
>>
>> Yes, `sudo` can be configured to set $PATH for the programs that
>> it invokes; see sudoers(5) and look for `secure_path`.  If you
>> don't invoke those from your normal shell, I don't see a problem
>> removing them from the default.
> 
> As for non-sudo PATH, you can always run:
>     export PATH=$(getconf PATH)
> To get a minimal PATH setting guaranteed to include all POSIX
> utilities.

Yes, this comes very close to what I was actually aiming at. In
my environment that's just /bin and /usr/bin and this is what I
typically need in my scripts (plus sometimes /usr/local/bin).
(For interactive use I'd add that too, and also my ~/bin, e.g.)
But all the sbin directories (and other clutter) would be gone.
It practically shows that these directories are unnecessary for
a normal (non-root) user. - Good hint. Thanks.

Janis