Re: [RFC] /etc/shells management (fish, mksh, posh, tcsh, zsh)

[Andrew Schulman <schulman.andrew@epa.gov>]

> On 2016-05-11 14:06, Yaakov Selkowitz wrote:
> > On 2016-05-11 12:09, Andrew Schulman wrote:
> >>> Am 10.05.2016 um 20:19 schrieb Andrew Schulman:
> >>>> Achim, can you please add /bin/fish and /usr/bin/fish to /etc/shells in
> >>>> base-files?
> >>>
> AFAICS this should be a two-step process.
> 
> 1) base-files' default /etc/shells should contain only the shells in a 
> Base install, namely:
> 
> /bin/sh
> /bin/ash
> /bin/bash
> /bin/dash
> /usr/bin/sh
> /usr/bin/ash
> /usr/bin/bash
> /usr/bin/dash
> /sbin/nologin

Yep.

> 2) Then all non-Base shells, namely:
> 
> fish                                         Andrew Schulman
> mksh                                         Chris Sutcliffe
> posh                                         Jari Aalto
> tcsh                                         Corinna Vinschen
> zsh                                          Peter A. Castro
> 
> will bump release adding an update_etc_shells call, per the attached 
> patch, with the path of their shell(s).

Agreed.

> Attached.  Any questions or comments before I make this official?

This looks right, except that it edits /etc/shells directly.  So if a person
edits /etc/shells to remove, say, fish, and fish gets updated, as written this
patch will add fish back in. (Why they'd install fish but not want it in
/etc/shells I don't know, but it's possible.)

Better is to add the new shell to /etc/default/etc/shells, then copy that file
over /etc/shells if that file had not been previously edited.
 
> Or, is this just not worth the trouble?  What are the consequences of 
> having shells listed in /etc/shells which aren't on the system?

/etc/shells doesn't seem to be very important in Cygwin.  And it includes one
shell now (pdksh) that doesn't exist in Cygwin, and it's not hurting anything.

But it's not a lot of work to do it right, and I think we should.

Andrew