[SPARCbook] unsubscribe

[amir manouchehri]

----- Original Message -----
From: Sunder <sunder at sunder.net>
To: <sparcbook at sunhelp.org>
Sent: Monday, January 24, 2000 5:26 PM
Subject: Re: [SPARCbook] Shell?


> Jeff wrote:
> >
> > Just wondering how I can SAFELY change my shell from sh to bash for
> > root.  This isn't on my sparcbook, but there was a big discussion on
> > this a week ago or so.
>
> Under solaris there's no chfn or chsh, so you'll have to login as root to
> change your own shell...  Under OpenBSD at least there's chsh -s shellpath
> which will do what you'd want.  So the only way to do it is to run vi
> /etc/passwd, or if you prefer vipw.
>
> I'd say, do this while under X, and don't log out.  So, you'd login as
root,
> open a terminal, vipw, then telnet or ssh to localhost and try to login as
> root.  Opening another Xterm (or DtTerm) should also be a good test.
>
> Generally it's a very bad idea to change to bash because bash is generally
> dynamically linked to the various libraries in /usr.  The problem is that
if
> you aren't able to mount /usr for whatever reason, you won't be able to
login
> as root to fix the problem.
>
> This is why root's login shell isn't /bin/sh, but /sbin/sh because
/sbin/sh is
> a statically linked version.
>
> So there are three ways to do this safely:
>
> 1. Create an alternate root account (i.e.: toor - root backwards) which
has
> /usr/local/bin/bash as its shell and use that)
>
> 2. Build your own version of a statically linked bash, dump it in /sbin
and
> make that root's shell.
>
> 3. Put something like this at the end of your .profile:
>
>  if  [ -f /usr/local/bin/bash ]; then; exec /usr/local/bin/bash; fi
>
> This will see if /usr/local/bin/bash exists, and if it does, switch to it.
You
> might have to experiment a bit more with this, so try it on a regular
account
> before you do it to root, but it's a starting point.
>
> I just wish Sun got off their asses and officially supported bash and
tcsh. :)
> ksh is nice, but, way outdated.
>
> --
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