4 ms·

My understanding is that bin is used for programs that do not require super user privileges, where as sbin programs do.

• rcthompson 15y ago
  And the reason for splitting them is so that normal users don't have the super-user programs in their $PATH, since they would be useless there. Of course, this is arguably obsolete now since the advent of sudo, policykit, and so on.
  • wmf 15y ago
    For some reason traceroute is in /sbin, but it works for normal users. Probably another historical accident (did it used to require root?).
    • gchpaco 15y ago
      Conventional (that is, without capabilities) traceroute and ping were setuid root because it there was no provision for emitting ICMP packets in the network APIs and only root could assemble raw packets.
    • koenigdavidmj 15y ago
      The particular way traceroute runs is implementation-defined. Some use ICMP echo request packets (ping), which you have to be root to send on most Unices. Most of them, however, use UDP packets instead.
  • nathan_f77 15y ago
    "The advent of sudo"... As someone with only 2 years Linux experience, this blows my mind