why

[SteveCSchofield]

Just started working with the appliance.  Is the intention to get rid of the BASH shell at some point?

The first thing I'm doing so far is shell.set --enabled true, shell

I'd be curious if others would rather adjust to get the bash shell out of the box and run the 'pi shell' (if that is the pre-created menu thingie )

[peetz]

Hi Steve,

if you launch the bash shell from the appliance shell prompt a warning text will be displayed that already answers some of your questions:

    ---------- !!!! WARNING WARNING WARNING !!!! ----------

Your use of "pi shell" has been logged!

The "pi shell" is intended for advanced troubleshooting operations and while

supported in this release, is a deprecated interface, and may be removed in a

future version of the product.  For alternative commands, exit the "pi shell"

and run the "help" command.

The "pi shell" command launches a root bash shell.  Commands within the shell

are not audited, and improper use of this command can severely harm the

system.

Help us improve the product!  If your scenario requires "pi shell," please

submit a Service Request, or post your scenario to the

https://communities.vmware.com/community/vmtn/vcenter/vc forum and add

"appliance" tag.

In short: "pi shell" (or bash access) is deprecated, so VMware doesn't want you to use it.

However, I can imagine that shell access to the appliance will still be possible in the future to enable support for advanced troubleshooting (just as it is still available in ESXi).

I highly recommend feeding back your use cases to VMware (through the forum mentioned in the message) - I did this myself in the past and found that the product managers are really listening and willing to improve the product based on your feedback.

For more information you can also refer to my blog post here (that i.e. explains how to defeat the "pi shell" enablement timeout):

http://www.v-front.de/2015/03/vcsa-60-tricks-shell-access-password.html

- Andreas