[Bug 251795] Re: /etc/environment PATH should not have quotes

[Steve Langasek]

This behavior has persisted in /etc/environment now for at least 3
years, with only one report of misbehavior as a result.  I don't believe
it's worth the effort to try to correct this now and risk getting
inconsistent behavior on upgraded vs. newly-installed systems,
especially as pam_env, which owns /etc/environment, *does* parse out the
quotes from variable assignments.

If something else is reading /etc/environment directly, bypassing
pam_env, and parsing it differently than pam_env itself does, then as
Colin says, this is a bug in that component.  I'm therefore reassigning
this bug report to the krb5 package, as this needs to be fixed in krb5
-rsh-server.

** Package changed: pam (Ubuntu) => krb5 (Ubuntu)

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/251795

Title:
  /etc/environment PATH should not have quotes

Status in “krb5” package in Ubuntu:
  New

Bug description:
  installed 8.04 server edition on a desktop and 8.04.1 desktop edition
  on a laptop, both fully updated.

  both have the line PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games"
  inside /etc/environment

  while this works for 99% of the time these days, in some rare cases,
  the quotes are taken literally and the string isn't fully expanded.

  specifically, using rsh/rlogin (even more specifically, I'm using the
  kerberized versions in krb5-clients package) on a server results in
  the PATH actually being
  "/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games",
  i.e. one long invalid directory, instead of expanded version,
  /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
  (6 separate directories).

  again, this isn't a problem for most use cases like a regular bash
  login or ssh, since they seem to evaluate it down to what's valid, but
  there doesn't seem to be any real reason to have the quotes in
  there....?

  some may not even notice it being incorrect after rlogin, since the
  bash invalid command fallback will fill in most usual locations like
  /usr/bin. however try running something in /usr/games, like say...
  banner and it will complain.

  solution is to just remove the two " characters in the line. works for
  me.