Last night, I emerged knetscan, and traceroute, being a dependency, was installed too. traceroute was put in /usr/sbin, which isn't in my PATH environment variable. I haven't specifically taken this (or anything else) out of my PATH. What this means is that when I run knetscan from my K menu, traceroute doesn't work. This could be fixed by making sure that the K menu executes knetscan with /usr/sbin in the PATH variable, but this wouldn't make it any easier to run traceroute from the command line. Perhaps a better solution would be to put traceroute (or a symlink to it) in /usr/bin. Another option is to have the installation of traceroute put /usr/sbin in users' PATH variables by default, but it would seem strange to do this for just one tiny little program like traceroute. Tim <>< enoch ~ # emerge --info Portage 2.0.54 (default-linux/x86/2005.1, gcc-3.4.5, glibc-2.3.5-r2, 2.6.13-gentoo-r5 i686) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.13-gentoo-r5 i686 Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 2.40GHz Gentoo Base System version 1.6.14 dev-lang/python: 2.3.5, 2.4.2 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.2.12 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.59-r7 sys-devel/automake: 1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r1 sys-devel/binutils: 2.16.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.22 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.11-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/env /usr/kde/3.4/share/config /usr/kde/3.4/shutdown /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/lib/X11/xkb /usr/share/config /usr/share/texmf/dvipdfm/config/ /usr/share/texmf/dvips/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/generic/config/ /usr/share/texmf/tex/platex/config/ /usr/share/texmf/xdvi/ /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/eselect/compiler /etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=pentium4" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://mirror.pacific.net.au/linux/Gentoo http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://www.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.au.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="x86 X alsa apm arts audiofile avi berkdb bitmap-fonts bzip2 crypt cups curl dri eds emboss encode exif expat fam foomaticdb fortran gdbm gif glut gmp gpm gstreamer gtk2 idn imlib ipv6 isdnlog java jpeg kde kdeenablefinal lcms libg++ libwww mad mikmod mmx mmx2 mng motif mp3 mpeg ncurses nls nvidia odbc ogg oggvorbis opengl oss pam pcre pdflib perl png pppd python qt quicktime readline samba scanner sdl spell sse sse2 ssl tcpd tetex tiff truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts udev usb vorbis wmf xml2 xmms xv zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc" Unset: ASFLAGS, CTARGET, INSTALL_MASK, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
since traceroute is suid root it is installed at /sbin. Notice how only group wheel can execute it? this is why. If you'd like to run it, just add it to your PATH, or specify exact location for knetscan.
(In reply to comment #1) Why is traceroute treated differently from, say, ping? Why shouldn't any user be allowed to execute traceroute? I've sorted it out on my computer so that I'm happy now, but it seems strange that when someone emerges knetscan, one of its four parts doesn't work without intervention. If this isn't considered to be a bug in the way traceroute is installed, then maybe it's a bug in the way knetscan is installed; not all of its intended functionality is available to an ordinary user who starts it up from the K menu (where it was put automatically). Tim <><
traceroute is only available to wheel group users, where ping is available to all. traceroute is to be executed only by trusted users, and so it belongs in /usr/sbin. you can ask the same question about ifconfig, since it is available to all users, but it is installed in /usr/sbin. about knetscan I dunno, so I can't help you there...
(In reply to comment #3) > traceroute is only available to wheel group users, where ping is available to > all. I know that this is the case. I want to know why. Why shouldn't an ordinary untrusted user be allowed to use traceroute? Can they cause damage with traceroute? How is traceroute more dangerous than ping? I notice that the makefile in traceroute-1.4a12.tar.gz/traceroute-1.4a12/ seems to give traceroute 4555 as permissions (i.e. anyone is allowed to execute it), but the ebuild then changes the permissions to 4710 for -r2 or 4711 for the others. Tim <><
