Shells

Shells

When your account is activated, your default shell will be set to bash - the GNU Bourne-Again SHell (bash), which is completely compatible with the Bourne shell (sh). For more details on bash, enter "man bash" while logged in.

Another popular shell is tcsh - an enhanced version of the Berkeley UNIX C shell (csh). The tcsh shell is completely compatible with the standard csh, and all csh commands and scripts work unedited with tcsh. For more details on tcsh, enter "man tcsh" while logged in.

To change your shell temporarily, type the shell name as a command ("bash", "tcsh"). This will run the new shell as a subshell. To return to your original shell, simple type

$ exit

To permanently change your login shell, use the command chsh:

$ chsh

You will then be given a list of shells to chose from.

Example:

$ chsh
Current shell is '/bin/bash' for user username.
Valid shells are:
    /bin/bash
    /bin/tcsh
Enter new shell [/bin/bash]: 

Choose a shell and hit enter.

The next time you log on, you will start in the new shell. However, you may switch back at any time.

Note: While you can use any of the available shells, only bash is fully supported by the batch system.
Updated: 2024-03-08, 14:54