[screen-devel] Re: default --prefix and OpenBSD

[karthik]

* Micah Cowan <address@hidden>:
> 
>  Adam Lazur wrote:
> > Micah Cowan (address@hidden) said:
> >> On OpenBSD systems, which by default apparently append . to PATH,
> >> ./configure apparently defaults to a --prefix of ., which isn't terribly
> >> helpful.
> > 
> > Wow, that can't be true. Can another openbsd user confirm this?
The default .profile

# $OpenBSD: dot.profile,v 1.4 2005/02/16 06:56:57 matthieu Exp $
#
# sh/ksh initialization

PATH=$HOME/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/games:.
export PATH HOME TERM

This is OpenBSD 3.7 GENERIC#50 i386.


> > Having . in PATH is one of the dumbest things I've ever heard, and is
> > a huge security issue. Of all the BSDs, I'd be surprise if openbsd did
> > it.
> 
>  http://article.gmane.org/gmane.os.openbsd.misc/100581
> 
>  (And see rest of thread.)
> 
>  The reasoning appears to be that having . at the end of path is not that
>  bad (ignoring typos), and better than letting inexperienced users add it
>  in by prepending it. Note that, at least, root does not get . in path by
>  default (but I do not build as root). I don't put . in my path, either,
>  but I discovered it there after the screen-configuring issue, so thought
>  I should report it.
The .profile puts the trailing dot into PATH but this does not affect
all shells.  I use bash and I don't have to deal with the trailing
dot since I have a .bash_profile.

>From bash(1)

After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and
~/.profile, in  that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one
that exists and is readable.

Karthik

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