Using Bash for root user on Solaris 10

July 10, 2013 admin

By default Solaris 10 use "/" as root's home directory and plain sh as a shell. If you want to change to using the /root directory as home and bash as a shell for more consistency with Solaris 11 you can do the following.

...
Oracle Corporation SunOS 5.10 Generic Patch January 2005

root@ldom2:~# grep root /etc/passwd
root:x:0:0:Super-User:/root:/usr/bin/bash

root@ldom2:~# mkdir /root
root@ldom2:~# pwd
/root

root@ldom2:~# cat .profile
#
# Simple profile places /usr/bin at front, followed by /usr/sbin.
#
# Use less(1) or more(1) as the default pager for the man(1) command.
#
export PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/sbin

if [ -f /usr/bin/less ]; then
 export PAGER="/usr/bin/less -ins"
elif [ -f /usr/bin/more ]; then
 export PAGER="/usr/bin/more -s"
fi

#
# Define default prompt to <username>@<hostname>:<path><"($|#) ">
# and print '#' for user "root" and '$' for normal users.
#
# Currently this is only done for bash/pfbash(1).
#

case ${SHELL} in
*bash)
 typeset +x PS1="\u@\h:\w\\$ "
 ;;
esac

root@ldom2:~# cat .bashrc
#
# Define default prompt to <username>@<hostname>:<path><"($|#) ">
# and print '#' for user "root" and '$' for normal users.
#

typeset +x PS1="\u@\h:\w\\$ "

Logout and back in and your shell should be bash and prompt fixed as well.