Date: Wed, 18 Sep 1996 13:57:32 +0200 (MET DST) From: Jos Vissers <Jos.Vissers@telebyte.nl> To: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: bash default shell for root Message-ID: <199609181157.NAA14246@monet.telebyte.nl> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.94.960914183122.3018A-100000@harlie> from "Eric J. Schwertfeger" at Sep 14, 96 06:36:32 pm
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Eric J. Schwertfeger wrote: > On Sun, 15 Sep 1996, Anthony Hill wrote: > > Are there any strong reasons why I should not set root's default shell to > > bash, and if not, what do I need to do ? > > Yes. root's shell needs to be a statically linked shell in /bin for > disaster recovery. bash, as installed from ports, is dynamically > linked, and in /usr/local/bin, so if something goes wrong and /usr > doesn't get mounted, you can't log in as root (except via single user > mode). That said, I believe you'll find that sh is close enough to bash > for occasional use. It doesn't do everything bash does, but you set > environmental variables, do for loops, etc the same as under bash, and you > can set emacs mode line editing, so it's good enough for me. I have made a statically linked version of bash for this purpose but found that when it can't get to the password database it still won't go. I had NIS running on my home machine and when booting in single user mode it doesn't start up NIS so the machine doesn't have a complete password database. The same problem occurs when the NIS server doesn't respond. Even with a root entry in the actual password file it was a no go. I'm still not sure what the precise cause was but i decided that it is better to have /bin/sh as root login shell. Jos -- Jos Vissers, System administrator Telebyte
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