[Freeipa-users] why default shell /bin/sh

[Natxo Asenjo]

On Thu, Jun 6, 2013 at 4:30 PM, Rob Crittenden <rcritten at redhat.com> wrote:
> Natxo Asenjo wrote:
>>
>> hi,
>>
>> just interested. We have noticed that ldap users have this PS1 envvar:
>> PS1='\s-\v\$ ' instead of the usual [\u@\h \W]\$
>>
>> This is a confusing moment. Changing the shell to /bin/bash solves this,
>> but maybe this is not optimal for other systems or users.
>
>
> Lowest-common denominator. One can configure all sorts of *nix-like systems
> to use IPA for authentication so we needed a default shell that is available
> on all systems and that is the bourne shell.

thanks all for your explanations.

In the bash man page I found this little gem:

--norc Do  not  read  and  execute the personal initialization file
~/.bashrc if the shell is interactive.  This option is on by default
if the shell is
              invoked as sh.

So this is the problem, when using /bin/sh (which in rhel is a symlink
to /bin/bash), the profile files do not get executed.

We do have other systems than rhel/fedora/centos, but none where users
interactively login. So I am just going to go ahead and make my life a
little more pleasant with a minder spartan shell :-)

-- 
groet,
natxo