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Date:      Mon, 11 Dec 2000 23:10:00 -0800
From:      Doug Barton <DougB@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Cliff Sarginson <cliff@raggedclown.net>
Cc:        questions@FreeBSD.org
Subject:   Re: Root and the C Shell
Message-ID:  <3A35CF48.C2869B54@FreeBSD.org>
References:  <00121017490501.01067@buffy>

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Cliff Sarginson wrote:
> 
> Hello,
> A simple question, I loathe and detest the C shell.
> Will anything break if I change root's login shell to
> be something (anything!) other than csh ?

	The canonical answer to this question is that changing it to /bin/sh is
ok, but changing it to something else not built with the system is a bad
idea. Although, there are a lot of people who will tell you that they do
it, so it's ok. Personally, I have changed all my users (root, and
unprivileged) to use /bin/sh as their shell, and in my .profile's I have
this as the first line:

[ -x /usr/local/bin/bash ] &&
        exec /usr/local/bin/bash --rcfile $HOME/.bash_profile

It has saved my ass, or at least saved me lots of time fixing stuff on
more than one occasion. I have talked to some truly paranoid people who
do something like:

if /usr/local/bin/bash -version >/dev/null; then
        exec /usr/local/bin/bash --rcfile $HOME/.bash_profile
fi

I actually had one situation a long time ago where bash was there, but
it wasn't runnable due to a library problem, so the above would have
helped. However, making changes like that takes me a long time to
propogate across machines, so I haven't bothered yet... maybe it's time
for a .script spring, errr.. fall, ...errr... winter cleaning. :)

Good luck,

Doug


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