Talk:Shell

What is a login shell?

I was a Slackware user for some time, before finding FreeBSD. One of the things that surprised me was that FreeBSD seems to be fuzzier about what a login shell is. Slackware, and I suppose any linux, has a shell database (/etc/shells). If you attempt to change shells as an ordinary user, to provide a different login shell, it must exist in the shell database. As far as I can tell, there is no such restriction in FreeBSD even though it also has a shell database. In fact, (as root) any program at all can be substituted for a shell in the Shell field of the user's login profile (/etc/passwd), as long as it exists in the global PATH (only root can specify non-standard shells - such as /usr/sbin/nologin).

%grep python /etc/passwd
pylogin:*:2011:2011:Login to python:/home/pylogin:/usr/local/bin/python

I don't know what might be the full implications; but it is somewhat surprising that it's possible to have a ssh session that looks like this:

Using username "pylogin".
Using keyboard-interactive authentication.
Password:
Last login: Wed Jun  7 09:37:40 2006 from kanga
Copyright (c) 1980, 1983, 1986, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994
        The Regents of the University of California.  All rights reserved.

FreeBSD 6.1-STABLE (GENERIC) #10: Mon Jun  5 09:57:27 PDT 2006

Welcome to FreeBSD AMD64!

Python 2.4.3 (#2, Apr  6 2006, 15:45:31)
[GCC 3.4.4 [FreeBSD] 20050518] on freebsd6
Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information.
>>> import os
>>> keys = os.environ.keys()
>>> for val in keys:
...     print val,": ",os.environ[val]
...
TERM :  xterm
SHELL :  /usr/local/bin/python
MAIL :  /var/mail/pylogin
BLOCKSIZE :  K
FTP_PASSIVE_MODE :  YES
SSH_TTY :  /dev/ttyp5
SSH_CLIENT :  192.168.1.3 3173 22
LOGNAME :  pylogin
USER :  pylogin
HOME :  /home/pylogin
PATH :  /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/pylogin/bin
SSH_CONNECTION :  192.168.1.3 3173 192.168.1.5 22
>>> ^d

Useless, but interesting, eh? Here, the user's login shell is /usr/local/bin/python. Needless to say, that file is not listed in /etc/shells. When does FreeBSD use the shell database, if logged in as root? Maybe Linux works the same, but I just never noticed? — Ninereasons 13:07, 7 June 2006 (EDT)

It's true. I never noticed. Linux works just like this also. So, lftp, or cpan or the like, could be my login shell. Weird. Ninereasons 02:48, 9 June 2006 (EDT)