Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!rutgers!ucsd!ucbvax!decwrl!sun!pitstop!sundc!seismo!uunet!mcvax!hp4nl!philmds!leo
From: leo@philmds.UUCP (Leo de Wit)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Login shell?
Message-ID: <843@philmds.UUCP>
Date: 23 Oct 88 08:01:08 GMT
References: <3ed799bc.103e8@hi-csc.UUCP> <13851@mimsy.UUCP> <511@imec.UUCP> <1529@solo9.cs.vu.nl> <314@uplog.se> <842@philmds.UUCP> <7677@boring.cwi.nl>
Reply-To: leo@philmds.UUCP (Leo de Wit)
Organization: Philips I&E DTS Eindhoven
Lines: 22

In article <7677@boring.cwi.nl> dik@cwi.nl (Dik T. Winter) writes:
|In article <842@philmds.UUCP> leo@philmds.UUCP (Leo de Wit) writes:
| > 2) When I exec a shell in my .profile file (for instance if I want my
| > own shell instead of /bin/sh or /bin/csh and don't want to bother my
| > system manager), this shell doesn't start with '-'.
|
|But why not?  This is just what I have done for a long time: in my bin:
|	ln -s $HOME/bin/my_shell -my_shell
|and at the start of my .profile:
|	case $SHELL in
|	*my_shell)	;;
|	*)	SHELL=$HOME/bin/my_shell
|		PATH=$HOME/bin exec -my_shell
|	esac
|Works like a charm.  My shell will even do .profile.

I used that trick myself; not from a .profile but to get a .profile read.
But as far as I know, symbolic links are a BSD feature; when you have to
use a hard link, it may not be possible (different filesystem); even cp
fails if the original shell wasn't readable.

                                             Leo.