On Wed, 3 Sep 2003, Michael D. Spence wrote:

> 1) Is there a way to do the emacs mode thing with csh, and

I don't think so. With "csh", !! recalls the last command.

> 2) What would happen if I changed the root shell?  I'm
> reluctant to do this lest I break something.

Nothing; there are no consequences to changing root's shell on NetBSD.
All the system scripts and startup scripts have "#!" magicks, and the
startup scripts aren't even run under a login shell. The potential for
confusion in "crontab" is taken care of by the "SHELL=/bin/sh" at the
top of root's default crontab. You can always dream up scenarios where
the choice of shell matters, but they're all pretty obscure, and
there's certainly no effect when you're not logged in as, or trying
to log in as, root.

Note the "right" answer to that question is often given as, "Don't
login as root, so then you won't care what root's login shell is",
with the idea that you're supposed to login in as a user, followed
by "su -m".

I do log in as root when starting up, shutting down, and rearranging
partitions, even though it's not usually strictly necessary, so I make
root's shell "/bin/ksh", with the same initialization scripts as my
login, which is also using "/bin/ksh". That saves me from pulling my
hair out trying to deal with an unfamiliar shell, when I've already
got other problems. For the same reason, if I have to to type more
than a command or two in single-user mode, I'll start with "su -l",
which also gives the full, familiar, environment.

Frederick