When the shell-out wont...

["Reynir Stefansson" <reynirhs mi is>]

...check your "/etc/passwd".

In my case, I could shell out as root, but not as a user. Finally, after
much racking of brain and tearing of hair (as if I wasn't bald enough
already!), I tracked it down to my password file. The shell field for the
username was empty.

MC uses (it says) first $SHELL and then /etc/passwd to decide what to use as
subshell. Snag is, if the shell field in /etc/passwd is empty, you may find
SHELL set to "/bin/sh". MC refuses to shell out (interactive) on that. Hmph.

After comparing root and user environments, I tried "export SHELL=/bin/bash"
before starting MC. Wonderful wonderful subshell-hagen...

Knowing that, it was a simple matter of more mucking about to find out where
SHELL got its initial content from.

Don't you just hate discovering that the reason for you wanting to dynamite
the world is your own stupid mistake?

Reynir Stefánsson (reynirhs mi is)