Re: "No Shell"

From: David Douthitt (ddouthitt_at_cuna.coop)
Date: 05/19/04 

Date: Wed, 19 May 2004 12:05:06 -0500

"Michael Vilain <vilain@spamcop.net>" wrote:

> Just as an aside, if you change HP/UX's root shell to anything other
> than what HP set it to (I vaguely recall setting it to /sbin/ksh rather
> than their braindead non-POSIX /sbin/sh), the system wouldn't shutdown.
> The shutdown command said to change the shell back to /sbin/sh, then run
> shutdown again. I did this on 10.20 some years ago and don't know about
> 11.

I thought both HP-UX 10.20 and 11 used a POSIX sh. Trying to find the
Bourne shell on HP-UX is always fun (sigh).

I would have loved to switch our HP-UX systems to /bin/ksh but I didn't
know enough about the system to do such with impunity - I've heard
enough times the horror stories about not being able to log in and so
forth. When I start wanting more, I always just use the command
"/bin/ksh" and then continue on...

Linux is another matter - I know enough about Linux that I routinely
switch all root accounts to /bin/ksh. Only time it matters is if any of
the startup scripts use a "bash-ism" and don't remember to start their
script with "#!/bin/sh" ...

FreeBSD is yet another matter - I don't know if I could switch root's
shell without problems (their default is /bin/csh) but I don't have to.
  There is a user "toor" which is also uid 0 included in FreeBSD for
just such a purpose - change the shell (for "toor" that is) all you
want, that's why "toor" is there.

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