Re: need help establishing safety of zsh to sysadmin

[jarausch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Helmut Jarausch)]

> Hi,
> 
> I've been using zsh for over a year now, but it seems that it has
> recently come to the attention of the sysadmin who wants me to stop
> using it on the grounds that "it is not a supported shell" on the
> machines I work on.
> 
> I'm hesistant to give up zsh and all its great functions, which I've
> come to depend upon, so I was hoping some of you could give me some
> specific examples of how zsh has not caused problems for you sysadmins
> out here.
> 
> I need to make a pretty convincing argument if I'm going to keep this
> thing.  Any help appreciated.
> -- 
> Thank you for your time and consideration.  
> 

Tell this to your sysadmin (he might emailme directly if he/she likes to).
We have a maintainance contract with our hardware supplier (SGI) and I have
never seen patches and/or improvements for their favourite shells like
the bourne shell and the c-shell. BUT on the other hand I get updates, 
bug fixes and very useful new features quite regularily for the z-shell.
Furthermore, if I (your sysadmin) have/has any problems there is almost
immediate help from the 'ZSH-community'.
Try to get qualified help in short time from your supplier of your OS and
if you did succeed, indeed, please tell me his name immediately.

If there are security holes in your Unix OS then a bad guy will be able
to exploit these with any shell or other tools. The only bad thing is
to allow for SUID-shell scripts BUT FOR ANY SHELL.

Best regards to your sysadmin,
Helmut Jarausch.