Newbieish Desktop Questions

[Henrik W Lund]

Kristian Holdich wrote:

>On Sat, 2004-07-10 at 14:40, Kjell Midtseter wrote:
>  
>
>There's one glaring problem with that, if for some reason you need to go
>into single user mode under FreeBSD's default slicing scheme root wont
>have a shell as /usr isn't mounted. It's always good practice to keep
>the shell root uses in /sbin or /bin.
>
>You can change the shell root, or any other user uses by using chpass
>also, and so long as the shell is in /etc/shells it will be valid.
>
>I was actually more interested in understanding whether any critical
>scripts would start barfing if the shell got changed, I know on Solaris
>I got into the habit of keeping root using /sbin/sh.
>  
>
As far as I know, you're prompted for a root shell whenever you enter 
single user mode anyways (I am, at least, and I use /bin/csh for root 
normally. I'm still prompted every time). So, whatever shell you use for 
root in multiuser mode shouldn't matter, as single user mode is a 
different kettle of fish altogether. Granted, getting into the habit of 
using one shell for root in multiuser, then having to switch into an 
unfamiliar shell for single user could complicate work slightly...

As for vital scripts failing, I doubt it. Unless you start symlinking 
like crazy, things should work fine, as scripts starting with #!/bin/sh 
will always use /bin/sh and so on (so unless /bin/sh is a symlink to 
/usr/bin/wish or some such exotic setup, nothing will barf. :-)

-Henrik W Lund