From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Sep 14 18:36:35 1996 Return-Path: owner-questions Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) id SAA22853 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 14 Sep 1996 18:36:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from horst.bfd.com (horst.bfd.com [204.160.242.10]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.7.5/8.7.3) with ESMTP id SAA22847 for ; Sat, 14 Sep 1996 18:36:33 -0700 (PDT) Received: from harlie (bastion.bfd.com [204.160.242.2]) by horst.bfd.com (8.7.5/8.7.3) with SMTP id SAA08957; Sat, 14 Sep 1996 18:36:22 -0700 (PDT) Date: Sat, 14 Sep 1996 18:36:32 -0700 (PDT) From: "Eric J. Schwertfeger" X-Sender: ejs@harlie To: Anthony Hill cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: bash default shell for root In-Reply-To: Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk On Sun, 15 Sep 1996, Anthony Hill wrote: > Hey all, > > 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. Use chsh to change your shell.