Dear Maintainer,
Debian's packaged systemd complains that /usr/bin and /usr/sbin are not
merged, and reportbug now marks all reports with a corresponding "taint"
flag. I reported this for the systemd package:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1085370
That report was closed as "wontfix", such that the Debian package will
continue to complain about the Debian-mandated layout. Another obvious
way to fix this problem would be to change Debian policy, to decide in
favour of the layout preferred by systemd.
It seems worth considering, anyway. The policy mentions sbin for some
mail-related programs, but otherwise seems silent on what should go
there, saying just "The location of all files and directories must
comply with the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard" (with some exceptions).
That document is vague, saying /sbin and /usr/sbin are for "commands
relating to filesystem maintenance and boot loader management" and
"binaries used exclusively by the system administrator" (and that
symbolic links are acceptable). None of these are true about sendmail,
and with un-privileged user name-spaces they're also not really true
about some of the listed commands such as "route". The choice of what
goes where seems haphazard; I have several un-privileged scripts that
aren't even using name-spaces, but are using commands from an sbin.
- Michael