From owner-freebsd-questions Tue Dec 12 9:43:46 2000 From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Dec 12 09:43:44 2000 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from boat.mail.pipex.net (our.mail.pipex.net [158.43.128.75]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with SMTP id 3166837B400 for ; Tue, 12 Dec 2000 09:43:43 -0800 (PST) Received: (qmail 22214 invoked from network); 12 Dec 2000 17:43:42 -0000 Received: from mailhost.puck.pipex.net (HELO mailhost.uk.internal) (194.130.147.54) by our.mail.pipex.net with SMTP; 12 Dec 2000 17:43:42 -0000 Received: (qmail 28639 invoked from network); 12 Dec 2000 17:43:41 -0000 Received: from ukcamgate2.cam.uk.internal (172.31.6.172) by mailhost.uk.internal with SMTP; 12 Dec 2000 17:43:41 -0000 Received: by ukcamgate2.cam.uk.internal with Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) id ; Tue, 12 Dec 2000 17:43:46 -0000 Message-ID: <886CA0C095C5D411B95400508B6F741286607C@ukcamexch4.cam.uk.internal> From: Daniel Bye To: 'Doug Barton' Cc: 'Cliff Sarginson' , questions@FreeBSD.org Subject: RE: Root and the C Shell Date: Tue, 12 Dec 2000 17:41:45 -0000 MIME-Version: 1.0 X-Mailer: Internet Mail Service (5.5.2650.21) Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG You seem to have missed the bit where I say that if the box in question has more than one admin (a possible state of affairs for a production machine), then leave the shell as a statically linked one, such as csh or sh. You don't sound like a hardass, but I take your point, if you are using an OS that will simply puke if it can't find root's shell when coming into run level 1. My "limited experience" tells me not to change root's shell under Solaris, for example. However, FreeBSD gives you the CHOICE, and even through a few near fatal, and very very nasty system crashes, having my root shell as bash has NEVER yet proven to be an obstacle - for the simple reason that if I need to restart one of my machines in single-user mode, I can still get a sh session. Yes, compared to probably the vast majority of people on this list, my experience IS limited. But that doesn't mean that I know not whereof I speak. Neither does it mean that I only use FreeBSD as a desktop environment, and not for any "serious" computing. It was not my intent to start a flame-war, particularly if I was to be on the receiving end - I hereby climb down from my soapbox, and apologise sincerely to the innocents caught in the cross-fire. Dan "the inexperienced script kiddie (allegedly)" > -----Original Message----- > From: Doug Barton [mailto:DougB@FreeBSD.org] > Sent: 12 December 2000 17:09 > To: Daniel Bye > Cc: 'Cliff Sarginson'; questions@FreeBSD.org > Subject: Re: Root and the C Shell > > > Daniel Bye wrote: > > > > I don't like csh either, and have never come to grief using > > bash as my root shell (under FreeBSD. Linux (RH of some kind) > > was not so forgiving...) I don't think there is anything that > > requires root's shell to be a specific one (except dogma, aka > > tradition). > > You left out of your list the wisdom and experience of > people who have > spent years administering unix machines in a variety of > environments and > situations. The fact that you, in your limited experience > have never had > any problems waving a loaded gun at your foot doesn't mean that it's > safe to do it. I don't mean to sound like a hardass here, but I'm sick > and tired of this, "_I_ do it, so it MUST be ok." line of (alleged) > reasoning. > > You are free to do whatever you want to do on your > boxes, and I'm not > going to argue that point with you. If all you're running is a desktop > workstation that you can reach over and restart at the touch of a > switch, you probably never will run into a problem with a > shell for root > on some other partition. However, it's clear that the BEST course of > action that covers more situations more appropriately is to make your > root shell one of the staticly linked shells that is built with the > system. > > Doug > -- > So what I want to know is, where does the RED brick road go? > > Do YOU Yahoo!? > To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message