SUMMARY (2): Ultra10 Keyboard Backspace & Up Arrow key

From: Brown, Melissa (BrownM@fhu.disa.mil)
Date: Thu Jun 29 2000 - 12:46:47 CDT


I didn't realize until today that I had a typo in this summary!! I figured
I better resummarize so that future archive-readers wouldn't be mislead.
:-)
 
I had at least six people email me to tell me the problems associated with
root using a dynamically-linked shell instead of the static-linked shell of
/sbin/sh. I included some of the great comments below. ( I wondered why
they were writing to tell me that! )
 
What I meant to say was:
> Wow! Quickly fixed... I just needed several people to point out that I
was
> probably using an expanded shell like tcsh on the other systems. I am!
> (But I wanted to change them so that root used the /sbin/sh instead, so
> didn't do that on the new one)
 
Thanks to these Sun Managers, who besides being well-versed in the Sun
Management, they are great at reading summaries!!!
 Chad Price
 David Bierley
 Richard Bond
 Tim Strobell aka Griffy
 Carl Isenburg
-------------------------------------------------------
Minor point. root should use /sbin/sh as its shell. /bin/sh and all of the
extended shells link to libraries that are housed in various places on the
system, mostly /usr. If you have a disk emergency, you may find that your
root account does not have a usable shell. /sbin/sh is statically compiled,
and since /sbin *should* always be on the / partition, you will always have
a shell.
 
If you find that you are working as root a lot - none of us do, right? ;) -
create another uid0 account that has the shell of your choice and su - up to
it when you need to be root...
--------------------------------------------------------
root's default shell is /sbin/sh, a static version of sh that lives in /.
If
you ever have "bad things" happen, root may not be able to login in single
user
mode because the dir containing your shell may not be mounted or may be
trashed.
 
I always create a uid 0 account (like 'toor' or 'notroot') and change the
shell
on that instead. This leaves the real root available for emergencies and
the
other root for convenience.
---------------------------------------------------------
However, there is one very good reason why the shell for the root login
is /sbin/sh instead of any of the other shells. The /sbin/sh program
is statically linked and most (all?) of the other shells are
dynamically linked. If you ever have a problem with your system that
causes it to attempt to enter single user mode and whatever the problem
is also causes the /usr file system to not be available, you will not
be able to run any programs that are dynamically linked. This is the
reason why the key programs in the /sbin directory are all statically
linked.
---------------------------------------------------------
 
 
On Mon, 26 Jun 2000, Brown, Melissa wrote:
> Subject: SUMMARY: Ultra10 Keyboard Backspace & Up Arrow key
>
> Wow! Quickly fixed... I just needed several people to point out that I
was
> probably using an expanded shell like tcsh on the other systems. I am!
> (But I wanted to change them so that root used the /bin/sh instead, so
> didn't do that on the new one)
>
> >From now on, I tcsh, I tcsh, I tcsh
>
> SUMMARY:
> Use a shell like tcsh, bash, ash, or zsh
> Make sure you include the shell in your /etc/shells file
>
> Thanks to all the great help, the comments all follow!
> Tim Evans
> GCarr
> Gabriel Rosenkoetter
> David Evans
> Russ Poffenberger
> Oliver Hemming
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Are you using a shell which supports such (i.e., tcsh)?
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> I thought the "up arrow" key only worked to give you the last command for
> tcsh, not csh?
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Try using a shell that actually has command history (ash, bash, tcsh,
> zsh), or learn about csh's ! history manipulation (it's in The Fine
> Manual).
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Yes. I'll bet you were using tcsh on the other machines and using csh
> on the new machine.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> Command line recall is NOT a standard shell feature. You need an expanded
> shell
> like tcsh.
>
> See the ftp archives at http://metalab.unc.edu/ <http://metalab.unc.edu/>
for free software.
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
> get bash... you can download it from:
> http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/downloads/indexWeb.html
<http://www.sun.com/bigadmin/downloads/indexWeb.html>
> I'm sure you know not to make it root's default shell though :-)
> ---------------------------------------------------------------
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
> I've got an Ultra 10 that I'm installing with Solaris 2.6. It's almost
> ready to come online, but it has some annoyances I don't know how to fix!!
> I haven't had to do anything special on the other systems (Sparcs and an
> Ultra 1), running the same version OS.
>
> When logged in as root, and csh'd or not, the backspace key does the
garbage
> thing (I know how to fix that, although I haven't had to put it in .login
or
> .cshrc), but what I really want to fix is the "up arrow" key.
>
> When I press the "up arrow" to go through the last commands that I've used
> with that logon, I get garbage!
>
> Anyone know how to fix that???
> I promise to summarize.
>
> :-)
> Melissa

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