For helping users change shells.

25 responses total.

What is the status of the !change program, in regard to set-up of
.profile and .cshrc files? Is a default now installed, or do we tell
users asking about changing to csh or tcsh, to first copy someone
else's .profile and .cshrc?

I seem to remember that we decided that .profile, .cshrc, and .login could
be created by newuser for everyone so that users would be free to change
shells via the chsh command without worrying about creating or copying the
missing files.  What ever happened to that idea?

Curiously, someone asked me about this just this morning.

Right now, the "change" program is under repairs of some sort,
and cannot change shells.  You can use the Unix command "chsh"
instead, which will ask the user what login shell to change to.
It does the same thing that the change program would.

The default resource files for every shell are kept in the
sh script file /usr/local/noton/nu/protos.  Users can copy
this file to their directory and edit it down to the files
they need (and the file does tell you which ones you need
and which you don't for each shell), but it's probably
easier for them to copy someone else's resource files.

I'm toying with the idea of a Lynx option to copy generic
resource files into a user's home directory.  If I do this,
I'll keep copies in the Lynx directory, and I'll tell everyone
where I've stashed them.

Ignore my other post.  Folks, I found a default, generic .login
and .cshrc already in the Lynx directories.  Here are the
addresses:

        /usr/local/lib/lynx/popcorn/default.login.html
        /usr/local/lib/lynx/popcorn/default.cshrc.html

Have your new users copy these files to their home directory
with the names .login and .cshrc, respectively.

I should still do up a generic .profile file, though.

And ignore that post, I got the addresses wrong.  Instead, try:

        /usr/local/lib/lynx/local/popcorn/default.login.html
        /usr/local/lib/lynx/local/popcorn/default.cshrc.html

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But once we get a bigger disk, it sounds like a good idea.

I'm a little behind on these things, has anything been set up yet
so all newusers get a .profiel, .login, and .cshrc file yet ?

Nope.  There's been some concern that if people had both a .profile
and a .login, they might change their settings in the wrong file,
and then have no idea what was going wrong.  "But I change the term
type in my .login to vt100!  See, it's right there!  So why won't
it work?"  "Um, because you use the bbs shell..."

So could someone present (in small simple words for my overwhelmed brain)
What is the process to change someone over to a new shell ? It's one
of teh things I'd like to know how to do, but haven't quite figured
out how to do yet.  Many  thanks and Happy New Year !

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It may be wise to try running the desired shell (just as a command), and then
(under it) sourcing the startup files - just to catch any dumb syntax errors,
constructs valid only under other shells, etc.

To source a file under sh or bash, use a period followed by a space before
the file's name, for example:
. .profile

To source it under csh or tcsh, I think you'd do:
source .login

Thanks you very very much !

chsh gives you the options (among others)
/bin/sh
/bin/csh
/usr/bin/sh
/usr/bin/csh
Do you want to use the longer or short forms?

/bin is a symbolic link to /usr/bin, so in practice it doesn't matter.
I don't know which is better in principle.

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Is there any difference between /bin/csh and /usr/bin/csh other than the path?

I repeat that /bin is a symlink to /usr/bin.  So /bin/csh & /usr/bin/csh are
exactly the same file.
<goes off muttering>

Oops.  Sorry.  I missed that.

Then why not eliminate one of each set of alternatives in chsh, so users
don't have to know this? 

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But why do you have to offer the (newbie) user the alternatives, and confuse
them? I mean just eliminate offering the choice of two reponses that do
the same thing. What's going on internally isn't the issue.

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Heck, I thought you could do *anything* with computers....  B^P.

(Guessing at the deleted comments from the rsposnes is fun.)

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