Harald Arnesen via Dng <dng@???> writes:

> No. Dynamically linked binaries came much later (SunOS?) than /sbin.

There was some discussion of the history of /sbin on the TUHS (Unix
History Society) mailing list a couple of years ago. The consensus was
that it was introduced between 4.3BSD Reno (1988) and Tahoe (1990), as a
location for the various binaries that used be in /etc, because people
were starting to mount root filesystems over NFS and wanted /etc to only
contain local config files.

The first mention of /sbin on Usenet is a post from Keith Bostic on 16th
Febuary 1988, "describing the upcoming File System reorganization,
presented at the BSD BOF during last week's USENIX"; it includes "/sbin
(root binaries)" and "/usr/etc (really sbin)". There are mentions later
that year that make it clear that SunOS had moved some (but not all)
binaries into /sbin for the same reason.

-- 
Adam Sampson <ats@???>                         <http://offog.org/>