From owner-freebsd-questions Fri Oct 29 21: 3:36 1999 Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from fw.wintelcom.net (ns1.wintelcom.net [209.1.153.20]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0939014D66 for ; Fri, 29 Oct 1999 21:02:33 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from bright@wintelcom.net) Received: from localhost (bright@localhost) by fw.wintelcom.net (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id VAA08174; Fri, 29 Oct 1999 21:24:10 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 29 Oct 1999 21:24:10 -0700 (PDT) From: Alfred Perlstein To: Graeme Tait Cc: "Jason C. Wells" , J McKitrick , freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: stupid root/toor question... In-Reply-To: <381A93BC.59BE@echidna.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII Sender: owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, Graeme Tait wrote: > Jason C. Wells wrote: > > > > On Fri, 29 Oct 1999, J McKitrick wrote: > > > > >Looks like root IS toor. > > >But why was everyone saying to use a different shell in toor and save sh > > >for root in the event of problems? > > > > Now for the gory details. > > > > Bash is built with the use of shared libraries. The libraries are in > > /usr/lib. Suppose /usr has a problem. You cannot mount /usr. You cannot > > use bash. If root tries to use bash but bash will not work, then root > > cannot login. Poof, you are locked out. > > > Not so! > > This might be a problem in other Unixes, but in FreeBSD, you can always boot > into single user mode, where sh is the default shell. People have been known to overwrite /bin/sh with bash... however a little known factiod, you actually have another copy of sh available in /stand should your /bin get hosed (*). -Alfred (*) it's a long story :) To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message