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List:       kde-user
Subject:    Re: HELP! KFM in super user mode
From:       "Bruce J. Carter" <bjcarter () gte ! net>
Date:       1998-07-01 2:27:09
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Hi Ivo,

On 30-Jun-98 Ivo Naninck wrote:
> 
> Bruce,
> 
> I think you're right, I might have written the answer myself, without
> seeing it.
> I think I got the point.
> I will gonna play with that, but 2 questions arise now:
> 
> 1) Am I the only one having this problem? I mean, there are several
> newbies
>    with even so newbie questions, but I never saw this one in the list.

I am thinking that most newbies have not changed root's shell from bash to
some other shell such as csh. They take the defaults for shells, as far as
I know the default shell for all new users is bash, unless it is specified
otherwise through either adduser or the usertool in the control-panel
which is a gui.

> 2) I know that changing root's default shell on Solaris, causes a lot of
>    troubles, resulting in having to boot from CD and then manually
>    change back the passwd file. Isn't there such an effect on Linux? 
>    What happens with the rc-scripts, for instance? Well, nothing happens
>    with
>    the scripts actually, but are there unpleasant side-effects due 
>    to change
>    of the default shell?
> 

Yes and this may be what we are seeing on the mailing lists with a lot of
the problems of not finding things when executing, some of the things
are set by defualt to the correct values, but the builtins are falling like
your's did due to the incorrect shell. It also appears that before the
user's shell is executed, and I may be wrong here, that some default
values are set, then the shell selected for the user is executed and the
environment is passed to that shell. This is why one would not have to do
the things you have to do with a Sun. It appears that the folks behind the
design of Linux actually thought out what was the best thing to do, where
as with many commercial vendors provide some defaults but do not go the
full way to standardizing the login process. Such as using a login file
for csh and having the user to have a .cshrc in their home directory to
set things properly. 

The above more or less explains why things mostly work under Linux without
a lot of pain associated with logging in, but when executing shell
scripts. On the Sun one can always boot single user mode or failsafe and
fix the anomolies without booting from a CD.

> ---
> You can only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.
> 
> Best regards, and don't let the bits byte!
> Ivo Naninck.
> ~
> ~
>:wq!

Cheers,

Bruce...


----------------------------------
E-Mail: Bruce J. Carter <bjcarter@gte.net>
Date: 30-Jun-98
Time: 21:10:47

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