dustin sallings <dustin@spy.net> wrote:
> On Mon, 15 Mar 1999, Dean Huxley wrote:
> 
> // It's nice to have toor when roots shell is dynamically linked and
> // you've just messed up /usr/lib... ;-)
> 
> 	I kind of read that as, ``It's nice to have a back-door into the
> OS when you make unreasonable misconfigurations and need to repair them.''
> I've heard a lot of people talking about changing root's shell to their
> favorite login shell, which sounds to me that they want to use root as a
> general login shell.  I certainly use my favorite shell in the rare cases
> when I am root, but I dare not change any of my root shells.  It's just
> too easy in those rare cases to type ``exec /path/to/tcsh'' ...and *way*
> too many times, that wouldn't have worked.  I just can't imagine where
> changing root's shell, especially from a statically linked one to a
> dynamically linked one, would be a good thing to do.
> 
> 	I'm glad toor is going away, but I don't much care what shell root
> ends up with, as I don't intend to login as root, and in the rare cases
> when I need to, I'll exec whatever shell I want to use.

My comment was meant to be semi-sarcastic.  (Note the smiley...)

I've known someone who had roots shell set to tcsh, then messed up
some library with a faulty make, but recovered by going in a toor and
fixing things.  I'll concede that this is a rare case and that it
shouldn't be used a reason to keep toor alive.

I agree that setting roots shell to a dynamically linked one is a bad
idea, yet I know some people are still going to do it because it is
too much of a hassle for them to type ``exec /path/to/tcsh''.  Chances
are that these same people won't have set a password for toor, so it
probably wouldn't help them.

I don't think I've ever used toor personally, so I don't care if it
stays or goes.