On Nov 9, 2003, at 10:32 AM, irb wrote:

>        Be aware that there are programs which consult this file to 
> find out if
>        a user is a normal  user.  E.g.:  ftp  daemons  traditionally  
> disallow
>        access to users with shells not included in this file.

Aha!. So it doesn't matter what is in my /etc/shells so much as what is 
in the /etc/shells on the target computer.