2.4 Tip for Changing Account Setup: Keep a Shell Ready

The shell is your interface to UNIX. If you make a bad mistake when you change your .cshrc , .login or .profile file ( 2.2 ) , or your password, it can be tough to log in and fix things.

Before you change your setup, it's a good idea to start a login session to the same account from somewhere else. Use that session for making your changes. Log in again elsewhere to test your changes.

Don't have a terminal with multiple windows or another terminal close to your desk? You can get the same result by using rlogin or telnet ( 1.33 ) to log in to your host again from the same terminal. What I mean is:

somehost% 

vi .cshrc


   ...
Make edits to the file
...
somehost% 

rlogin localhost


   ...
Logs you in to your same account
...


An error message


somehost% 

logout


Connection closed.
somehost% 

vi .cshrc


   ...
Edit to fix mistake
...

If you don't have rlogin or telnet , the command su -  username ( 22.22 ) , where username is your username, will do about the same thing.