*BSD News Article 81016


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From: bkogawa@primenet.com (Bryan Ogawa)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Is /bin/sh OK?
Date: 16 Oct 1996 16:46:04 -0700
Organization: Primenet Services for the Internet
Lines: 64
Message-ID: <543s3s$4rc@nnrp1.news.primenet.com>
References: <JOHN.96Oct10165658@burdell.ece.arizona.edu> <325E882E.95F@www.play-hookey.com> <5438sl$pi@usenet.srv.cis.pitt.edu>
X-Posted-By: bkogawa@206.165.5.108 (bkogawa)

jlfox+@pitt.edu (James L Fox) writes:

>In article <325E882E.95F@www.play-hookey.com>,
>Ken Bigelow  <kbigelow@www.play-hookey.com> wrote:
>>John Galbraith wrote:
>>> 
>>> I recently installed the 2.1.5-RELEASE. ( It went totally smoothly
>>> ......
>>
>>man chpass. You can do 'chpass -s bash' to change your own shell.
>>-- 
>>Ken
>>

>This thread makes me suspect I'm missing something important about
>root, toor, /bin/csh, /bin/sh,,,,,,

>MUST root run with /bin/csh?

No.  However, I would recommend that one of (root, toor) run with either
/bin/sh or /bin/csh (since these are statically linked and on the root
partition which isn't probably true of bash, tcsh, or ksh). 

>How can I get chpass (chsh, etc) to really update the database
>and change an account's shell from /bin/csh to /bin/sh?

I usually use chsh (no arguments) and then manually edit the file, or use
just the shell name (no path).  Both appear to work.

>   1. /etc/shells contains both entries.
>   2. Either as su or user, the command
>      chpass -s /bin/sh [user]    // user included when su

>results in the following:
>chpass: rebuilding the database...
>chpass: done

>However, /etc/passwd and /etc/master.passwd get a fresh date/time
>entry (I heard the disk) but they are unchanged.

>Thanks,

>--Jim Fox
>p.s.  BTW, noone has really explained what the account toor is.
>      It's not in the index of "Installing and Running FreeBSD".

From what I've read, toor is an "alternate root" (toor is root spelled
backwards).

As such, it's not needed, but can be useful in certain situations.

You can use it to:

1.  Provide a bourne shell superuser account for admins not wanting to
use the C shell.

2.  Provide a statically linked and on the / partition shell and then use
root with a dynamically linked shell on /usr , like bash or tcsh.

Or, you can delete it.  It doesn't behave much differently than root, and
most of the uses seem to involve alternate shells.

--
bryan k. ogawa  <bkogawa@primenet.com>  <bkogawa@netvoyage.net>