csh as default root Shell

[Jerry McAllister]

On Mon, Sep 18, 2006 at 07:34:09PM -0700, jekillen wrote:

> Hello;
> Since I have been advised by way of correspondence with  UUASC (Unix 
> Users of Association of Southern California)
> that changing the root shell in FreeBSD is not advised and I have two 
> machines up and running and a third on the
> way, I have purchased a text from (I don't know if it is appropriate 
> for this list to mention the publisher by name but
> it is closely connected to the publisher of Absolute BSD).
> Has anyone any comments regarding this text based on familiarity (Using 
> Csh and Tcsh). I noticed the publication
> date is 1995. It's a manual of sorts, I'll read it before stumbling 
> around on lists for answers to awk ward questions.

You can mention any text you want.  Do we ban books in this country?

But, 1995 is kind of old as things go.  The book may have more recent
editions.   Another source is the the FreeBSD Handbook that is available
free online at the FreeBSD website and also in printed versions some
places.

As for changing the root shell, it is probably not a good idea.
First of all, /bin/sh will be there even if you don't have all the
file systems mounted for some reason, such as a disk problem.
Also, there may be some scripts that make a rash assumption about
which shell you are in.  Probably most of these are cleaned up and
specify their own shells, but, just in case.

So, the best thing is to leave the actual root id alone and then
if you prefer another shell, such as tcsh, create another root account
you can use for doing other root work when the full system is up.
You only need to create a /etc/passwd entry using the  vipw  utility
and make the UID and GID be 0 and put the preferred shell in the shell field.
When you write and quit, the database and master.passwd will be properly
updated if you use  vipw.   

Put the new root account you created farther down in the passwd file 
than the main root account.

////jerry

> 
> Thanks in advance.
> Jeff K.
> 
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