Why csh on Root?

[RW]

On Thursday 19 October 2006 14:03, 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.

There are problems with using a root shell that isn't entirely on the root 
partition. See the faq and search the list for details.

There is an alternative uid 0 user called toor which you can use if you want 
to use bash as root. OTOH hand there is a school of thought that you 
shouldn't be too comfortable as root.