Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Wednesday 05 April 2006 11:18, Jon LaBadie wrote:
>> <anything>/"s"bin is supposed to contain programs of interest to
>> "systems accounts", not to ordinary users.  Thus they would not
>> be in an ordinary users PATH by default because those users would
>> not look to execute them.
> 
> So thats why its called Sbin.  I always thought it was supposed to be 
> Scriptbin in the *nix lingo.
> 

Originally sbin was static bin, i.e., programs that were statically
linked so as not to require share libraries that may or may not
exist if in single-user mode with no filesystems mounted besides /.
Older OSs had many of the same programs in both /bin  and /sbin, so
that you could take advantage of shared libraries with the /bin version
under normal operation, but still be able to run the /sbin version
for recovery purposes.  For example, a Solaris 8 box here has a 7k
/bin/uname and also a 210k /sbin/uname.
   I think the definitions have evolved over time, and you may or
may not be able to run everything in /sbin on any particular system
without having additional shared libraries available.

Frank

-- 
Frank Smith                                      fsmith AT hoovers DOT com
Sr. Systems Administrator                       Voice: 512-374-4673
Hoover's Online                                   Fax: 512-374-4501