From owner-freebsd-questions Thu Sep 14 4:39:36 2000 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mailhub.unibe.ch (mailhub.unibe.ch [130.92.254.109]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 367D337B423 for ; Thu, 14 Sep 2000 04:39:34 -0700 (PDT) Received: from CONVERSION-DAEMON by mailhub.unibe.ch (PMDF V5.2-32 #42480) id <0G0V00K01K7ZLB@mailhub.unibe.ch> for freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG; Thu, 14 Sep 2000 13:36:07 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from iamexwi.unibe.ch (haegar.unibe.ch [130.92.71.10]) by mailhub.unibe.ch (PMDF V5.2-32 #42480) with ESMTP id <0G0V00HKMK7Z3S@mailhub.unibe.ch>; Thu, 14 Sep 2000 13:35:59 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from vasarely.unibe.ch (vasarely [130.92.63.42]) by iamexwi.unibe.ch (8.8.8+Sun/8.8.8) with ESMTP id NAA21527; Thu, 14 Sep 2000 13:42:21 +0200 (MET DST) Received: from localhost (roth@localhost) by vasarely.unibe.ch (8.9.1b+Sun/8.9.1) with ESMTP id NAA06847; Thu, 14 Sep 2000 13:42:19 +0200 (MET DST) Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2000 13:42:18 +0200 (MET DST) From: Tobias Roth Subject: Re: Root Shells In-reply-to: <20000914090047.C22658@linux.rainbow> X-Sender: roth@vasarely To: igorr@crosswinds.net Cc: freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Message-id: MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT X-Authentication-warning: vasarely.unibe.ch: roth owned process doing -bs Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG > > Over the last few months I have become quite used to zsh, and have set the > > root account on one of my boxes to use it. However when a friend of mine saw > > this he seemed to think it a very bad thing, noting that zsh is not in the > > root partition etc. My question is, is this really a problem? can't I just > > run sh if the need arises? > This is bad. This is bad just because you work as root always. If you don't do > this, then why do you need zsh for root. Also, it is good idea to use static > linked shell for root. Also, if some error will be found in sh/csh it will be > fixed "automagically" after next cvsup (or next next cvsup). But for zsh you > need reinstall it from ports. That's what the toor account is for. In normal operation, you use the toor account with the shell of your choice when you need superuser privileges, in case of an emergency (i.e. when /usr is not mounted) you use the root account with /bin/sh. Put a line like alias su="su toor" in /home/youruser/.profile Your /etc/passwd looks something like this: root:*:0:0:your name:/root:/bin/sh toor:*:0:0:zsh superuser:/root:/usr/local/bin/zsh youruser:*:1000:1000:yourname:/home/youruser:/usr/local/bin/zsh cheers, Tobe To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message