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From: "Brian K. White" <brian@aljex.com>
References: <103lgk7fpboc995@corp.supernews.com> <20040224034647.GD2434@jpradley.jpr.com> 
Subject: Re: bash as login shell
Date: Tue, 24 Feb 2004 02:01:42 -0500
Message-ID: <ELSdneJ1iI14a6fd4p2dnA@comcast.com> 

Jean-Pierre Radley wrote:
> David P. Lurie typed (on Mon, Feb 23, 2004 at 10:18:53PM -0500):
>> 5.0.7 with all update and maintenance packs, security patches
>>
>> I would like to change the login shell to bash for both root and my
>> regular account, but no explicit choice for bash occurs in the drop
>> down list on Account Manager.
>>
>> A test user account was created, "/usr/bash" was entered manually
>> for login shell,  "add shell environment files to home directory"
>> was checked, and the account login seems to proceed normally to a
>> functioning bash shell. I had previously invoked bash from a command
>> prompt.
>
> /usr/bash??  Not /usr/bin/bash?
>
>> The dropdown list of shell choices includes /usr/bash for the new
>> user, but not other users after selecting "change login shell" in
>> Account manager. I assume that manual entry of "/usr/bash" and
>> checking the shell environment option would work for previous users
>> as well.
>>
>> Is this approach likely to cause any problems?
>
> I'd just go into /usr/lib/mkuser and concoct entries for bash, which
> can easily be patterned on those already present for other shells.

And add /usr/local/bin/bash to /etc/shells

But I still hold that it's not adviseable to use bash as root's login shell
or even as a temporary interactive shell in some cases. I'd say someone in
some position of knowledge agrees with me. Witness that even the latest
gnutools that include all kinds of nice gnu stuff, still does not include a
/usr/gnu/bin/bash. I think it's ok to have it on the system so that odd
scripts that just assume all unixes have bash have some chance of running
without needing to be hand-edited.

On any 5.0.6 or later box, if you just set root's login shell to /bin/ksh in
/etc/passwd, (and make sure your VISUAL or EDITOR environment variable is
unset or at least not set to "vi") you will find the shell acts enough like
bash for most people.
You can even back-port this behaviour to earlier boxes by just copying the
.kshrc and .profile from a 5.0.6 or later box. (tab-completion won't work on
the earlier boxes unfortunately)

most programming syntax that anyone actually uses day to day works the same
in ksh as bash, and the .kshrc & .profile provides most of the same
interactive candy (up/down arrows browse command history, left/right arrows
allow command editing, tab-completion, etc...)

There are a couple things that might get used a lot by some prople that
don't work. Ctrl-V is an example.

Unless you have a very specific and non-trivial reason to use bash, I do not
recommend making root's shell bash. The system has been using sh and ksh for
20 years and their behaviour has not changed much the whole time. bash is
pretty close but not the same and while most scripts have been updated over
the last year or two (or three) so that they specify a shell at the top
rather than trusting the the current interactive shell or roots defined
login shell is the same /bin/sh it always was, it's still just plain not a
safe assumption that throwing in this deviant element into the works will
not cause any problem, anywhere, ever.

If bash shows up in a stock install, or at least in gnutools, and in
/etc/shells (without putting it there myself), and in mkuser/bash
THEN I'll consider it OK, and when (not if) things break, I'll complain to
SCO.

You really shouldn't even use ksh as roots /etc/passwd login shell, but at
least that's extremely well tested by now.

-- 
Brian K. White  --  brian@aljex.com  --  http://www.aljex.com/bkw/
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