Death to toor

[Jilles Tjoelker]

On Sat, Jun 11, 2005 at 11:38:43PM -0400, Richard Coleman wrote:
> David O'Brien wrote:
> >I wouldn't say we are totally safe changing root's default shell away
> >from /bin/csh.  We still see people give the advice that one should not
> >change root's default shell.

> That sounds like old school sysadmin conservatism.  I don't think there 
> is any technical basis for such advice.  I'm not suggesting that the 
> default be changed, since consistency is also a desirable thing (I get 
> irked when I log into a box as root and suddently find that I'm in 
> bash).  But I doubt it hurts anything to changes root's shell these days.

Actually, there is a case where it matters. The following command,
executed as root, uses the shell field in the passwd entry "root"
(except if getlogin() returns a different username with uid 0):

su -m nonrootuserwithinvalidshell -c 'command'

I sometimes use this in scripts with more complicated commands and then
it's pretty annoying that that depends on root's shell :(

-- 
Jilles Tjoelker