From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Tue Oct 30 02:31:05 2007 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4822B16A46B for ; Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:31:05 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from p0036343@brookes.ac.uk) Received: from fizeau.zen.co.uk (fizeau.zen.co.uk [212.23.8.67]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 11D6013C4C3 for ; Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:31:05 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from p0036343@brookes.ac.uk) Received: from [212.23.3.140] (helo=pythagoras.zen.co.uk) by fizeau.zen.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1Imba5-0003kx-Aq for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:51:29 +0000 Received: from [82.70.166.86] (helo=[192.168.0.200]) by pythagoras.zen.co.uk with esmtp (Exim 4.50) id 1ImbZu-0007Y4-RA for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:51:19 +0000 Message-ID: <472647A0.3030009@brookes.ac.uk> Date: Mon, 29 Oct 2007 20:50:40 +0000 From: Stephen Allen User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.3) Gecko/20070326 Thunderbird/2.0.0.0 Mnenhy/0.7.5.666 MIME-Version: 1.0 To: FreeBSD Questions Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Originating-Pythagoras-IP: [82.70.166.86] Subject: Dangers of using a non-base shell X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2007 02:31:05 -0000 It's been drawn to my attention not to use bash from the ports collection, because if one of it's dependencies (gettext or libiconv) fails or is updated significantly, it could break, and prevent login. The suggested solution was to use a base shell (such as sh) and append 'bash -l' to .shrc to automatically enter bash. The quite annoying side-effect is having to type 'exit' twice to get out of a su shell or screen. Would it be a better idea to use the pre-compiled binary for bash? And if I did so, could I be alerted to updates as easy as using 'pkg_version -v' when checking if any ports need updating? Many thanks, Steve