Add /usr/sbin and /sbin to default root PATH When dropbear is used in a very restricted environment (such as in a initrd), the default user shell is often also very restricted and doesn't take care of setting the PATH so the user ends up with the PATH set by dropbear. Unfortunately, dropbear always sets "/usr/bin:/bin" as default PATH even for the root user which should have /usr/sbin and /sbin too. For a concrete instance of this problem, see the "Remote Unlocking" section in this tutorial: https://paxswill.com/blog/2013/11/04/encrypted-raspberry-pi/ It speaks of a bug in the initramfs script because it's written "blkid" instead of "/sbin/blkid"... this is just because the scripts from the initramfs do not expect to have a PATH without the sbin directories and because dropbear is not setting the PATH appropriately for the root user. I'm thus suggesting to use the attached patch to fix this misbehaviour (I did not test it, but it's easy enough). It might seem anecdotic but multiple Kali users have been bitten by this. From https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=903403

#include "tommath_private.h"
#ifdef BN_MP_GROW_C
/* LibTomMath, multiple-precision integer library -- Tom St Denis */
/* SPDX-License-Identifier: Unlicense */

/* grow as required */
mp_err mp_grow(mp_int *a, int size)
{
   int     i;
   mp_digit *tmp;

   /* if the alloc size is smaller alloc more ram */
   if (a->alloc < size) {
      /* reallocate the array a->dp
       *
       * We store the return in a temporary variable
       * in case the operation failed we don't want
       * to overwrite the dp member of a.
       */
      tmp = (mp_digit *) MP_REALLOC(a->dp,
                                    (size_t)a->alloc * sizeof(mp_digit),
                                    (size_t)size * sizeof(mp_digit));
      if (tmp == NULL) {
         /* reallocation failed but "a" is still valid [can be freed] */
         return MP_MEM;
      }

      /* reallocation succeeded so set a->dp */
      a->dp = tmp;

      /* zero excess digits */
      i        = a->alloc;
      a->alloc = size;
      MP_ZERO_DIGITS(a->dp + i, a->alloc - i);
   }
   return MP_OKAY;
}
#endif