adding a new user

[joephilip]

I want to add a new user. I want to use the shell as ksh. When I did 'which ksh", I got:
/usr/bin/ksh

I am planning to add the user like this:

useradd -u 901 -c "PS User" -d /home/pshrms -m -s /usr/bin/ksh -g dba pshrms


When I looked at other users, lots of them have /sbin/sh as their shell. When i did "which sh", it says /usr/bin/sh. So, why are they created with /sbin/sh?

Thanks,

Joani Tamminen

 

[trunix]

There are several shells.

Bourne shell (sh), Posix (also sh), Korn (ksh) c shell (csh), born again shell (bash) and others.

Whichever one you use is usually just down to personal preference.

The system administrator would normally select his / her own preference when setting up new users, but individual users may ask for their own preferred shell.

Remember that after logging in to your default shell, a user can switch to another preferred shell if they wish by entering the sh, csh, ksh etc at the command line.

 

[felixfong]

"which" report the first found path of sh....

In your case, /usr/bin was placed ahead of /bin in your $path

BTW, /bin is a sym link to /usr/bin....

 

[joephilip]

I am still confused. What is this /sbin ? Is it the same as /bin.

Joani Tamminen

 

[KenCunningham]

As I understand it, sbin exists because should you only be able to mount the root (/) partition, you would not have access to the /usr/bin filesystem/directory and would therefore not be able to login as no shell would be available from /usr/bin, whereas sh is available in sbin, part of the root filesystem. Any better?