Shell

[Donald Wilde]

On 6/30/20, Polytropon <freebsd at edvax.de> wrote:
> On Tue, 30 Jun 2020 13:27:58 +0200, Per Hedeland wrote:
>> On 2020-06-30 11:43, Steve O'Hara-Smith wrote:
>> > On Tue, 30 Jun 2020 14:44:34 +0530
>> > Manish Jain <bourne.identity at hotmail.com> wrote:
>> >
>> >> It is often unnoticed that FreeBSD has a mirror of the root user
>> >> appropriately named toor (whose shell can be anything).
>> >

Thank you all for adding to my initial answer to Brandon.

>> > 	Traditionally root ran /bin/csh and toor ran /bin/sh to keep both
>> > BSD and AT&T trained sysadmins happy, it really doesn't matter what
>> > login
>> > shell root uses at work we use zsh, at home I use bash but you could
>> > even
>> > use mc or vshnu.
>> >
>> > 	However the OP was concerned about the prompt (which many people
>> > have correctly said involves setting PS1) rather than the shell.
>>
>> Yes, PS1 is what to set for /bin/sh and its relatives (e.g. bash,
>> zsh), but it has no effect for csh/tcsh - there you need to set
>> 'prompt' (and the "formatting sequences" are also different). And it
>> seems the OP was primarily interested in root's prompt (i.e. csh by
>> default).

Ah... I'm still learning too. :D

>
> The first message says that the prompt character is $, which would
> not be the case (per default) if the C shell was chosen; so the
> case probably is related to "shell changed from C shell to sh",
> rather than "the dog ate my configuration files". ;-)
>
> The command to use here is "chsh".
>
I would add only one suggestion here, and that would be to consider
using bash-static and parking it in a place where it is available in
the event of an excruciating mishap.

The only concern with doing so is that doing so causes the (larger!)
bash-static kernel to be used everywhere. If you have lots of regular
users with console prompts, this could be painful.

I haven't done this, but it should be possible to install both
bash-static and bash. One would have to rename the first (bash-static)
to something other than 'bash' and add that to the /etc/shells file,
but after doing so also install the bash package with the
non-monolithic binary 'bash' and use that as the shell for regular
users.

Have I forgotten any concerns or steps in doing so? It seems to me
that the benefits of having full bash capability available for the
toor user, and having regular bash available (as opposed to sh or
tcsh) for regular users has marked advantages for users (such as
myself!) who are not csh adepts.

Brandon, this is getting esoteric. I hope you can follow and benefit
from the responses to your question!

-- 
Don Wilde
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