bash: fdisk: command not found

Question

I have installed Debian 10 remotely on a server from a live netinstal iso USB over KVM, but then I encounter this strange problem:

# fdisk -l
bash: fdisk: command not found

However if I use /sbin/fdisk -l , the command executes with no issues.

I'm wondering what has caused this and how can I fix it?

Answer 1

You have to add /sbin to your PATH:

vagrant@stretch:~$ PATH="/sbin:$PATH"
vagrant@stretch:~$ command -v fdisk
/sbin/fdisk

And use fdisk with sudo:

vagrant@stretch:~$ sudo fdisk  -l
Disk /dev/sda: 19.8 GiB, 21265121280 bytes, 41533440 sectors
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes
Sector size (logical/physical): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
I/O size (minimum/optimal): 512 bytes / 512 bytes
Disklabel type: dos
Disk identifier: 0xa0fd0b1a

Device     Boot    Start      End  Sectors  Size Id Type
/dev/sda1  *        2048 39438335 39436288 18.8G 83 Linux
/dev/sda2       39440382 41531391  2091010 1021M  5 Extended
/dev/sda5       39440384 41531391  2091008 1021M 82 Linux swap / Solaris

Answer 2

Is /sbin in your path? Run echo $PATH to check. Often /sbin is a symlink to /usr/bin so check if that is also in the path. See this question for how to modify the path.

Answer 3

In my case, Debian 11 Bullseye, fdisk wasn't installed at all. I run this command to check if it was installed or not:

apt policy fdisk

Which returned:

fdisk:
  Installed: (none)
  Candidate:  2.36.1-8+deb11u2
  Version table:
     2.36.1-8+deb11u2 500
        500 http://deb.debian.org/debian bullseye/main amd64 Packages
        500 http://security.debian.org bullseye-security/main amd64 Packages

Then I installed it with:

apt install fdisk