dash system & login shell

dash is more efficient than bash in all respects, except perhaps for interactive use. and i always replace system default, root, and login shells to dash.

$ cd /bin
# ln -sf dash sh

# usermod -s /bin/sh root

i faced a particular problem in gentoo.

after the rebooting the just installed system, i couldn't login as root to finish installing the rest of the system. i finally gave up and trashed the system.

i wiped the disk clean, and re-installed yet again from scratch. all i wanted to check was that i could login. what's the purpose of installing a fabulous system, if you can't login? so i left most other install tasks/config for later. i could successfully login!

now i moved on with what i normally do to my systems, just to finish up and find that i could not login!

i remembered the last thing i did was to replace my system default and login shells to dash. so i undid that. bash became the default again. and i could login!

this gentoo problem was isolated to dash as login shell!

further troubleshooting narrowed down the issue to login shell only. gentoo was fully working with dash as the system default shell.

my research led me to the ever helpful gentoo forums, and this post.

indeed, gentoo does not list /bin/dash in /etc/shells. problem solved!

# echo /bin/dash >>/etc/shells