The ipmi-console command can be executed by any normal user and doesn't
require "system administrator" (aka "root") permission., IMHO, it should
hence be installed to /usr/bin, and not to /usr/sbin., The fact that you
are accessing an IPMO SoL console of another machine, (of which you may
be the system administrator) doesn't mean you have to be the system
administrator of the client running ipmi-console.

Debian FHS 3.0 states:

This implies that not only the "other" commands but also the utilities
for system-administration are "root-only" - which in the case of
ipmi-console they clearly are not.

I'm not familiar enough with other parts of freeipmi-tools, there
might be more commands that share a similar situation.

Hi,

sorry for the very late reply. I forwarded this to the upstream mailing
list back in February 2021 [1], and upstream opened an issue to track it
[2].

Upstream agreed that ipmiconsole (and probably ipmipower and the other
out-of-band tools) don't need root, but leaned towards keeping them in
/usr/sbin for two reasons:

- they have been there for 15+ years, so many users and scripts hardcode
/usr/sbin, and moving them would at least need compatibility symlinks;
- security: most FreeIPMI tools read configuration files that can hold
BMC credentials, and an admin who sets one up may not expect every local
user to run the tool with it.

The upstream issue is still open, so I'm leaving this bug open and
marking it as forwarded there. I'd rather not move the binaries in
Debian only; if upstream changes the install location, Debian will follow.

Regards,
Fabio

[1] https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/freeipmi-devel/2021-02/threads.html
[2] https://github.com/chu11/freeipmi-mirror/issues/40