On Thu, 13 Jan 2000, Tim Walls wrote:

> > Andrew Todorov, writes:
> >> 
> >> when I change the shell for root to bash the chsh program send this message:
> >> 
> >> "warning,unknown root shell"
> > 
> > I would personally not use bash for a root shell. This is because it
> > usually sits in the /usr partition. I want root to be able to run a shell
> > even if the /usr partition gets corrupted - so I stick with /bin/csh.
> > (Actually, the first thing I do as root is usually type exec
> > /usr/pkg/bin/bash, but that's another story...)
> > 
> > My advice is: DON'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT THIS. Stick with /bin/csh.
> 
> Another good reason (IMHO) for not doing this, is that a decent shell
> (my favourite being tcsh, for what it's worth,) could well rely on some
> dynamic libraries[1].
> 
> So if your libraries go to pot for any reason (for example, you are
> upgrading from a.out to ELF,) you then end up without a working root
> shell.  Not good :-(.
> 
> Most of the essential things for recovering/building a system (like sh &
> tar) are statically linked for this reason...

	I always put a static copy of tcsh in /bin as root's shell on all
	my systems for just this reason :)

		David/absolute