[NTLUG:Discuss] restricting shell functions in a telnet session

[Jeremy Blosser]

David Camm [bbai at onramp.net] wrote:
> Seth Daniel wrote:
> > It's in there.  You can accomplish the same thing buy making
> > a symlink called rbash and pointing it at bash.  Then change the
> > shells in the passwd file to rbash.
> 
> i'm not sure a understand why ln -s /bin/bash rbash, then executing
> rbash would change the behavior of bash.  am i missing something?

Because apps can see what name was used to invoke them and adjust their
behaviour accordingly.  bash also acts differently if invoked as 'sh', and
vim uses it for 'view', 'vi', 'gvim', 'ex', etc.

> > Perhaps you have an older bash?  Or an older bash man page?
> 
> redhat 5.2 - 2.0.36 kernel

This isn't the bash version... but assuming you haven't updated it, you've
got a bash 1.x.  You probably want a bash 2.x.

-- 
Jeremy Blosser   |   jblosser at firinn.org   |   http://jblosser.firinn.org/
-----------------+-------------------------+------------------------------
the crises posed a question / just beneath the skin
the virtue in my veins replied / that quitters never win