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Where is zsh supposed to be?
(lemm.ee)
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As long as
/bin/sh
isn't pointing to zsh, you haven't messed anything up. A lot of public scripts wouldn't expect to be run under zsh.If you write your own scripts, I'd say to use zsh, but start it with
#/bin/zsh
(or whatever resolves to zsh) to be explicit about the fact that it is designed for zsh and nothing else. Most scripts written aren't going to be distributed to hundred of thousands of systems, but at most used in a handful of systems. No point in not enjoying some things zsh does better in scripts.A lot of systems have other dependencies as well, and as long as a system which has scripts in it is specifing zsh along with other dependencies, I wouldn't see the problem. zsh doesn't take up much space or introduce other problems just by being installed.
As for the root shell, you can put
Defaults env_keep += HOME
in your sudo configuration. That will havesudo -s
run your usual zsh with its usual configuration for interactive, daily use. Be aware of any config that shouldn't be run as root.sudo -i
will still run the shell root is assigned in /etc/passwd, and everything run as root would function ar expected.#!/usr/bin/env zsh
is better for portability/compatibility. You can set the root shell as whatever you want (including zsh). Leaking the user context withsudo -s
is generally a bad idea. Unless you actually share a system with multiple users, I'd advise to set a root password and usesu -
in favor ofsudo -i
orsudo -s
. Two (proper) passwords are more secure than one.edit: typo
My collegues wouldn't appreciate my shell config in the root account, especially the vi bindings ;)
I understand the motivation of using the user environment in the root context. It's still a bad idea. The assumption is, that it is easier to compromise a non-privileged desktop user than the root account. Imagine some exploit breaking out of a sandbox and doing some minor modifications to your $HOME: either aliasing
ls
to a script somewhere in your home by changing your profile or some shell rc file, or prepending your $PATH environment variable with a folder burried somewhere in your home directory where a scriptls
is placed:Now, as an attacker you just wait for some admin on a shared system to come along and use
sudo -s
.