Re: Default PATH setting - reduce to something more sensible?

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).