From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; de-AT; rv:1.4) Gecko/20030922 Description of problem: When logging in as root the /usr/local directories are inserted in the PATH variable before /usr/sbin /sbin /usr/bin /bin Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1.Login as root 2.echo $PATH Actual Results: /usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/root/bin Expected Results: 3./usr/kerberos/sbin:/usr/kerberos/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/root/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin The /usr/local directories should be used last in the PATH variable Additional info:
Typically /usr/local/*bin are placed ahead in the path to allow local overrides of programs that come with the OS. Because only root can write to /usr/local/* on a default install, this doesn't pose a security risk.