Rich Moen:
...
> You might have different criteria in mind, so please feel free to
> clarify, if so. My view is that executables in /sbin and /bin
> _required for maintenance in /usr's absence_ must not depend on /usr
> being mounted. Many executables somehow get installed there anyway;
> probably they'd have been better written to /usr/sbin and /usr/bin,
> but that's a separate issue. As Filesystem Hierarchy Standard 2.3[1]
> puts it:
>
> /sbin contains binaries essential for booting, restoring, recovering,
> and/or repairing the system in addition to the binaries in /bin.
>
> /bin contains commands that may be used by both the system
> administrator and by users, but which are required when no other
> filesystems are mounted (e.g. in single user mode). It may also
> contain commands which are used indirectly by scripts
...

One can then compile a list of thoose binaries. It will obviously
depend on your system/s.

booting:
grub, lilo, other boot loaders, init, sh
restoring, recovering, repair:
tar, dump, cpio, *fdisk, mkfs.*, fsck.*

A possible list could be:

/bin
attr, basename, cat, chgrp, chmod, chown, cp, cpio, cut, date, dd,
df, diff, du, echo, find, free, grep, groups, head, hexdump, kill,
less, ln, man, md5sum, mkdir, mv, ps, pwd, readlink, rm, rmdir, sed,
sh, sha1sum?, sleep, sort, stat, stty, sync, tail, tar, tee, time,
touch, tty, uname, uniq, wc, which, xargs

/sbin
badblocks, blkzone, blkid, blockdev, depmod, dump, e2*, findfs,
fdisk, fsck*, fstrim, fsync, halt, hdparm, hostname, init, insmod,
ldconfig, loadkmap, lsmod, makedevs, mdadm, mkfs.*, mkswap, modinfo,
modprobe, mkfifo, mknod, mount, poweroff, rdev, reboot, rmmod, swapon,
umount, xfs* (if you use xfs)

Add your boodloader.

Possible additions:
*acl, *attr, de/compression programs, network setup programs

Any more?

Regards,
/Karl Hammar

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