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Re: Removing bash (Was: /etc/init.d/network is too simple?)



* Joel Klecker said:
> At 03:25 +0200 1999-04-19, Marek Habersack wrote:
> >It was when potato went to glibc2.1. The version of bash installed wasn't
> >compatible with the new libc and had to be replaced.
> 
> That is not correct, it is due to libreadline in slink being 
> accidentally compiled without optimization, then it had to be kept 
> that way to avoid breaking bash, I recompiled bash for glibc 2.1 for 
The actual cause here doesn't matter that much - the important thing is that
bash didn't work - it was linked to libreadline and thus rendered unusable
in the new environment. Too bad that such an important component of the
system failed.

> libreadline, and due to differences in the glibc 2.1 libc_nonshared 
> lib, this broke bash if libreadline was upgraded first. It is my 
> opinion that bash is too fragile to be /bin/sh due to its 
> dependencies on libreadline and libncurses, other shells such as 
I agree 100%. bash is far to baroque in that respect to be reliably used as
a primary shell, at least for the root account. While I like it's
extensions, I'd rather live without them but I'd like to be sure I'll get
the shell prompt no matter what library (save for libc) fails to load...

> pdksh make a much safer /bin/sh.
> pdksh is an especially good choice due to its dependence only on 
> libc, and it is posix compliant unlike ash, it is also a decent 
> interactive shell, with completion, command-line editing, and history.
Well, you are right, but the problem is too many scripts depend on bash,
which is wrong.

marek


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