From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Feb 25 2:50:59 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from alpha.comkey.com.au (alpha.comkey.com.au [203.9.152.215]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 379E014D55 for ; Thu, 25 Feb 1999 02:50:47 -0800 (PST) (envelope-from gjb@comkey.com.au) Received: (qmail 28338 invoked by uid 1001); 25 Feb 1999 10:31:57 -0000 Message-ID: <19990225103157.28337.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au> X-Posted-By: GBA-Post 1.04 06-Feb-1999 X-PGP-Fingerprint: 5A91 6942 8CEA 9DAB B95B C249 1CE1 493B 2B5A CE30 Date: Thu, 25 Feb 1999 20:31:57 +1000 From: Greg Black To: Langa Kentane Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: csh or bash (newbie) References: <913B8C252194D2119BD500805F31817803047D@za12nt02.mweb.com> In-reply-to: <913B8C252194D2119BD500805F31817803047D@za12nt02.mweb.com> of Wed, 24 Feb 1999 16:27:38 +0200 Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > The other day I asked for help on how to change the default shell for root. > Some told me that it was not a very good idea to change root's shell. > > Can someone explain to me why? There is no good reason, but there are several myths about this (some of which are *partly* valid for some Unix variants but not for FreeBSD). It's true that a shell like bash (which is dynamically linked by default) needs the shared libraries to be accessible if it's to work. Of course, if it's installed in the default location (/usr/local/bin), they'll be available if bash is. If you do as I do and install bash in /bin, then the libs may not be available in single user mode. The solutions to this are simple -- if there is no problem with mounting /usr, mount it. If there is, take the option of using /bin/sh which is offered to you at that time. I sometimes use experimental shells for root -- there's no real reason not to. Of course, the question of what you should do as root is a quite different one -- but it doesn't have much to do with which shell you use as root. -- Greg Black To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message