How to check what is the default shell

The default shell used by a user is contained in the seventh field of /etc/passwd or its equivalent.

$ getent passwd xxxxxx | awk -F: '{ print $7 }'
/bin/bash

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

Posted 2018-07-30T17:38:15.170

Reputation: 100 516

Is there another way that doesn't require access to such file like passwd – faressoft – 2018-07-30T17:44:29.637

The only reliable place this information can be found is passwd. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams – 2018-07-30T17:45:16.350

When I install zsh how doesn't mark itself as the login shell – faressoft – 2018-07-30T17:46:34.560

1Did you use chsh to tell the system to use it? – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams – 2018-07-30T17:47:08.440

Oh maybe it does that, that's why it asks me for permissions – faressoft – 2018-07-30T17:48:01.930

So chsh changes the passwd file – faressoft – 2018-07-30T17:48:18.407

1@faressoft: You can check that with strace, for example strace chsh -s $(command -v bash) |& grep open – Arkadiusz Drabczyk – 2018-07-30T18:31:15.160

@faressoft Please note you should always have access to /etc/passwd. It is where you user ID and username are mapped, and your home directory, and default shell, and it has to be accessible by a lot of things. You are maybe thinking of /etc/shadow (which is where passwords are stored) and that is usually not world-readable. – BenjiWiebe – 2018-07-30T19:24:44.120

@faressoft In fact, when you log in, the shell you get actually is read from your /etc/passwd, via the same mechanism getent uses. – BenjiWiebe – 2018-07-30T19:26:01.627

How to check what is the default shell

Answers