On Wed, 6 Feb 2008 15:55:07 -0600 "Shawn Walker" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> On Feb 6, 2008 3:37 PM, Kyle McDonald <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Shawn Walker wrote: > > > On Feb 6, 2008 3:18 PM, a b <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > Oh, and as far as the enterprise argument, go talk to some of the > > > enterprise sysadmins who post here; they hate that /bin/sh isn't > > > anywhere near portable across systems. > > > > > > > > It's also not part of any standard, so how could it really? > > That doesn't excuse having a good standard shell for /bin/sh. > > > If they want to write portable scripts they should use /bin/ksh. It's > > that simple. > > They're not the ones who wrote the scripts from what I gather. They > are the ones trying to use software across multiple systems. > > At least with a POSIX shell for /bin/sh, there is a far better chance > of getting scripts written by third parties to work. Shawn: Do you have any actual enterprise systems admin experience? And if so, I'd be curious as to what platforms. Or is your role more primarily along the lines of Open/Solaris evangelist? Just curious so I can understand where you're coming from a bit better. In my opinion /bin/sh should be /bin/sh (bourne), no if's ands or buts about it. Even casual newbie script writer knows to specify the "she-bang" shell at start of script. That's what provides consistent behavior. The portability across platforms issue arise because platform A may put ksh93 in /usr/local/bin/ksh93, while platform B has it in /bin/ksh93, etc. There are common workarounds for this type of issue that have been around for decades. root's login shell is another matter. cron, scripts, etc. should specify the shell. changing root's default shell to ksh93 is just fine with me, e.g. see me earlier post w.r.t. OpenBSD, as long as you label it ksh93, and not try to rebadge as /bin/sh because then us sysadmin types think we're dealing with bourne shell. Make is zsh, or xyzsh if you want, but don't call something that's not /bin/sh because that's when you're setting the stage for disaster. OTOH, leaving it as /bin/sh is no big deal either, since under most situations admins will be su'ing up from mortal account and can carry whatever their preferred shell with them when they do. Granted in rare instances where one must login as root in single user mode it's nice to have a decent interactive shell, but not at expense of screwing over the "old guard". And these days where less of the system and userland files are being broken out onto separate partitions, it's becoming more and more of a corner case. Thank you and have a nice day. -- Best regards, Ken Gunderson Q: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. A: Why is putting a reply at the top of the message frowned upon? _______________________________________________ opensolaris-discuss mailing list opensolaris-discuss@opensolaris.org
