[indiana-discuss] [docs-discuss] review request: user FAQ

[Doug Scott]

Iain MacDonnell wrote:
>
>
> Brandorr wrote on 09/ 6/07 10:20 AM:
>> I turned the question into two separate questions:
>>
>> ===Q: Why doesn't /bin/sh point to bash?===
>> A: Solaris uses the Bourne shell (/bin/sh) as the default system shell
>> to satisfy backward compatibility with historic releases of Solaris.
>> There is work being planned to replace the Bourne shell with a generic
>> POSIX compliant shell. Whether that is an updated bash running in
>> POSIX compatibility mode, or another shell such as ksh93 is still an
>> open question. Either option require additional coding resources to
>> implement.
>>
>> ===Q: Why isn't bash the default system shell?===
>> A: There is a consensus building to use a modern/user-friendly default
>> system shell, such as bash or ksh93, but the integration and
>> compatibility changes required have yet to be done.
>
> Sorry if this is nit-picky, but what does "default system shell" mean?
> If you mean the default for useradd (etc.), the word "system" is
> probably throwing me off. Maybe "default user shell" would be better?
>
>     ~Iain
>
I think by "default system shell" people are talking about the 
executable that runs a shell script which has '#!/bin/sh' as the first 
line etc.
The actual shell could be the original bourne shell or another shell 
like either bash or ksh that is linked to /bin/sh and acts like a POSIX 
shell when the system executes it as /bin/sh. Some people could also be 
referring to the default shell that root uses.

Doug