Alternate Shells

[x0705]

> A quickie: 4.2BSD chsh does not allow the user to specify alternative
> shells - only "sh" and "csh" are permitted. Why is this? It seems
> ironically inappropriate in UNIX, where the shell is ``an ordinary,
....
> Conor Rafferty                  conor at su-glacier.arpa

It's especially annoying if you want ksh.  The problem is that chsh is
a setuid program that hacks the password file, so it has to be very
restricted in its behaviour to avoid being a total security hole.
Our local System V Rel 2 systems have a more flexible variant on chsh;
I'm not sure if they're part of the  vanilla distribution or if they're
part of the standard Bell Labs add-on package, but it has a file of
legal shells you can use.
-- 
## Bill Stewart, AT&T Bell Labs, Holmdel NJ 1-201-949-0705 ihnp4!ho95c!wcs