Why csh on Root?

Jerry McAllister jerrymc at msu.edu
Thu Oct 19 15:27:40 UTC 2006


On Thu, Oct 19, 2006 at 08:03:02AM -0500, Martin McCormick wrote:

> 	Is there any particular reason why FreeBSD has csh as the
> default root shell?  Nothing really wrong with it except that I
> quit using csh about twelve years ago and so am a little rusty
> about the finer details when I come across a csh shell.  On a
> number of FreeBSD4.x systems, I used chsh to change root's shell
> after installing bash and the only thing I noticed was that one
> should be careful of the $PATH variable and make sure it at least
> hits all the same directories in the same order.  Other than
> that, it worked.
> 
> 	On a recent upgrade to 5.4, I noticed the C shell is
> still default so I figured I would ask before changing it so as
> not to introduce hidden problems later.  Basically, I like bash
> better and also add a couple more paths such as /usr/local/etc
> for home-grown applications.

No reason that I know of.   Just someone liked it better.  It is
a little nicer for interactive use.   I think the FreeBSD csh is 
really tcsh anyway.
Most scripts still specify /bin/sh so they don't use csh.   

////jerry

> 
> 	Thanks for your thoughts.
> 
> Martin McCormick WB5AGZ  Stillwater, OK 
> Systems Engineer
> OSU Information Technology Department Network Operations Group
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