Re: /bin/sh

[matthew neil garman <garman: @students.uiuc.edu>]

On Mon, Mar 15, 1999 at 03:01:48PM -0500, Noah L. Meyerhans wrote:
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> OK, I am sure this has been discussed to death at some point, but I just
> have to ask:  Is it really a good idea to have /bin/sh a symlink to bash?
> I know bash is a nicer shell to use, and provides a superset of the
> traditional sh's functionality, but I think that it's a better idea to use
> something like ash as /bin/sh, or at least as root's default login shell.
> ...

I believe it _used_ to be a problem with Debian if you changed the
/bin/sh symlink to point to something other than bash.  However, I
think you can safely modify the symlink without breaking anything.
I have had my /bin/sh point to ash for a _long_ time now, and I
haven't noticed any problems.  Some folks even claim to have speed
increases under some circumstances by changing the /bin/sh symlink to
point to ash.

And, if I remember correctly, package maintainers whose packages break
with ash as /bin/sh are more than willing to make their scripts and
such work with ash as your /bin/sh.

Have fun!
MG