From mboxrd@z Thu Jan  1 00:00:00 1970
From: ludo@gnu.org (Ludovic =?utf-8?Q?Court=C3=A8s?=)
Subject: Re: Patching the default PATH of `su`
Date: Fri, 06 Apr 2018 10:01:57 +0200
Message-ID: <8737084vbe.fsf@gnu.org>
References: <20180405163712.GA24811@jasmine.lan>
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In-Reply-To: <20180405163712.GA24811@jasmine.lan> (Leo Famulari's message of
	"Thu, 5 Apr 2018 12:37:12 -0400")
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To: Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name>
Cc: guix-devel@gnu.org

Hello,

Leo Famulari <leo@famulari.name> skribis:

> In the man page of su(1), it says this:
>
> ------
> The current environment is passed to the new shell. The value of $PATH is=
 reset to
> /bin:/usr/bin for normal users, or /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin for the =
superuser.
> This may be changed with the ENV_PATH and ENV_SUPATH definitions in /etc/=
login.defs.
> ------
>
> This means that `su leo` or `sudo su` give a broken environment on
> GuixSD. You have to use `su --login` instead.
>
> Should we use our own values for ENV_PATH and ENV_SUPATH so that this
> works out of the box?

Probably, yes.  It would be good to check how this affects
mingetty/login, sshd, etc.

Note that libc also has its own default PATH value in <paths.h>:

  /* Default search path. */
  #define	_PATH_DEFPATH	"/usr/bin:/bin"
  /* All standard utilities path. */
  #define	_PATH_STDPATH \
          "/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin"

Does =E2=80=98su=E2=80=99 rely on this?  In a future rebuild cycle we could=
 change these
values, but /run/current-system/bin wouldn=E2=80=99t work on foreign distro=
s, so
it=E2=80=99s not clear there=E2=80=99s much to gain.

Thanks,
Ludo=E2=80=99.