GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 101462
SHELL variable not set
Last modified: 2003-10-31 19:11:44 UTC
The $SHELL variable is not being set by gdm. This means that gnome-terminal will not work unless a shell is specified in /etc/passwd.
If shell is not specified in /etc/passwd why would we set the SHELL variable, the user has no shell then ...
To me it makes more sense to have a resonable default like sh or bash than to have the terminal come up and say that the command was not found. Even the console works that way.
And what is the use of this? In fact I know some people set no shell for users that they don't want to use shell ...
But not setting s shell is not really a secure way to stop people having access to a terminal - because of that i think that a default SHELL should be set.
Closing this - gdm shouldn't be messing about with $SHELL