update

Thu Sep 25 04:41:04 UTC 2014

On Thu, Sep 25, 2014 at 05:11:22AM +0200, Mikael Abrahamsson wrote:
> On Wed, 24 Sep 2014, Jim Popovitch wrote:
> 
> > I *did* read that, and it doesn't change anything about what I wrote. 
> > Debian didn't make those changes for you......  Debian has never set 
> > root's shell to bash, ever.  PEBKAC?
> 
> I can verify Williams settings on my Debian system that was initially 
> installed back in 3.x days or so, probably around 2005 or thereabouts. My 
> root shell uses bash and /bin/sh points to bash.

I haven't administered many Debian / Ubuntu systems recently, but I did
during the days of hamm / slink / potato, and my recollection is that
the *default* /bin/sh in 2.x and 3.x was bash, though it was possible to
configure the system to use ash or something lighter weight instead.
Doubt I currently have access to any systems that old, but:

% cat /etc/debian_version 
5.0.4
% ls -al /bin/sh 
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 2009-03-05 16:58 /bin/sh -> bash*
% which dash                         
dash not found

$ cat /etc/debian_version 
5.0.9
$ ls -al /bin/sh
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 4 2010-08-02 12:21 /bin/sh -> bash*

So, I think "never... ever" is maybe not quite correct.

w