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

[Sam Hartman]

So, fixing this particular bug in krb5-rsh-server is almost certainly
relatively easy.  Fixing krb5-rsh-server to use PAM directly is more
involved; it should be done, but there is not a lot of resources going
into krb5-rsh-server and krb5-clients at the moment.  Upstream split
these into the krb5-appl package in significant part to provide a lower
level of support for these packages.

The code in question is in bsd/login.c in the krb5-appl
package. Particularly, look at the read_env_vars_from_file function.
I don't have time right now to generate a patch or test it, but I wanted
to document where to look because I did have that time.

--Sam

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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.