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Date:      Thu, 25 Feb 1999 20:31:57 +1000
From:      Greg Black <gjb@comkey.com.au>
To:        Langa Kentane <LKentane@mweb.com>
Cc:        freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: csh or bash (newbie) 
Message-ID:  <19990225103157.28337.qmail@alpha.comkey.com.au>
In-Reply-To: <913B8C252194D2119BD500805F31817803047D@za12nt02.mweb.com>  of Wed, 24 Feb 1999 16:27:38 %2B0200
References:  <913B8C252194D2119BD500805F31817803047D@za12nt02.mweb.com> 

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> 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 <gjb@acm.org>



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