Re: itp: static bins / resolving static debian issues

[Justin Wells <jread@semiotek.com>]

Oops, you're right, and I knew that. Someone else said that, and it 
must have infected my brain. 

Of course you can have whatever you like as roots shell. 

I think either having sash as roots shell, or having a static ash with
sash available somewhere would be reasonable. The attraction of ash is 
that it's a Bourne shell, so old-time Unix users may be more comfortable
with that when they connect with root. Obviously the advantage of sash is
it has all those tools built in.

I really think it doesn't matter what roots shell is, providing there is 
a way to get on as root, or become root, at the times when you need the
static stuff. 

Justin

On Thu, Aug 19, 1999 at 02:01:05PM +0200, Marek Habersack wrote:
> * Justin Wells said:
> 
> > A static ash as root's shell might be the thing then, though we would
> But with static ash you lose all the goodies sash has built-in - and these
> are the reason why sash is such a great aide in misery.
> 
> > have to wait until the bash-isms were eliminated to make it effective,
> > and between now and then possibly have a second root user with a static
> > shell. 
> No, no. You are still making an assumption that all scripts are executed by
> the shell you are using - it's not the case. The linux kernel interprets the
> first line of the script and executes whatever interpreter is indicated
> there. It shan't be /bin/sash in most cases, but /bin/sh or even /bin/bash,
> /bin/csh, /bin/whatever. So, sash doesn't get to interpret the script, the
> shell which gets listed on top of the script is invoked to run the script.
> That's why a static ash would be a good thing. And, to make things
> efficient, the /bin/sh -> /bin/ash link would be made as a part of a single
> mode bootup process - probably as a part of the sash startup sequence - the
> internal ln command invoked from /root/.profile would do. Then, under normal
> circumstances, a bootup sequence checks whether there's a /bin/sh.single
> link (which is a saved link of what was before sash made /bin/sh point to
> /bin/static/ash) and restores the previous, SYSTEM DEFAULT shell. Does it
> sound reasonable?
> 
> marek