Alternate Shells

[Conor Rafferty]

In article <1229 at umcp-cs.UUCP> chris at umcp-cs.UUCP (Chris Torek) writes:
>We (well, Fred actually) modified chsh to read /lib/ok_shells for
>a list of the shells "ordinary users" can set up.  It's more anti-
>accidental-stupidity than anything else.

I've heard the "protecting people from themselves" argument a few times
now, but it seems flimsy to me. After all, you can destroy everything
you ever wrote with a single rm -fr *, whereas chsh <me> /bin/false
just requires a trip up the corridor to your sysadmin. Do we
make rm a privileged command? Of course not. It seems like we
can get by without this bit of paternalism in chsh too. 
    It's not an important point, but there is an important issue
behind it: are checks to protect novices to be taken over the line where
they limit the freedom of experienced users? After /lib/ok_shells, why
not /lib/ok_commands /lib/allowed_paths and mandatory "noclobber"?
It doesn't sound like Unix to me!

Conor Rafferty                  conor at su-glacier.arpa
231A Applied Electronics Lab.   conor at su-sierra.arpa
Stanford University Ca.94305	decwrl!glacier!conor
(415)497-1515