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I want to change my shell from the default bash shell to zsh on my Amazon EC2 instances. How do I go about doing it? Thanks!
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I want to change my shell from the default bash shell to zsh on my Amazon EC2 instances. How do I go about doing it? Thanks!
160
Try using the chsh
command.
e.g.
chsh -s /bin/zsh
You can confirm the location of zsh by running whereis zsh
, or alternatively simply run
chsh -s $(which zsh)
If you want to change the shell for a user account other than the one you're logged into, you'll need to run it as root, so to change john's shell, do:
sudo chsh -s $(which zsh) john
Note that you'll need to log out and log back in for the change to go into effect. If you're using Gnome or some other window manager, you'll need to completely log out of that session as well—simply closing and opening your terminal is insufficient.
20
Open /etc/passwd:
sudo vi /etc/passwd
Find the line with your username:
username:x:1634231:100:Your Name:/home/username:/bin/bash
and replace bash with zsh:
username:x:1634231:100:Your Name:/home/username:/bin/zsh
Log out and log in back for the changes to take effect.
6It's better to use chsh
, but if you're really going to edit /etc/passwd
by hand, at least use the vipw
command. – Valmiky Arquissandas – 2014-08-14T02:58:29.950
I don't have chsh on my machine. Also, for some weird reason my /etc/passwd file is regularly being overwritten by the default one. Do you know why this could be happening? – Georgii Oleinikov – 2014-08-14T16:44:19.117
Don't touch /etc/passwd. There are better ways to do this that do not require messing with the passwd tool! – Andrew – 2017-09-12T18:23:12.300
9
I came here to just add more additional information. If you have troubles when install zsh in Amazon Linux AMI by Amazon, like when you run:
sudo chsh $(which zsh) : // chsh command not found
Then you should install util-linux-user:
sudo yum install util-linux-user
(by default Amazon Linux AMI only has lchsh, but I can not figure how it work).
Then run the following command, it should work:
sudo chsh -s $(which zsh) $(whoami)
Thanks! This worked for AWS AMI :) – Mayura – 2019-10-20T23:31:01.807
With lchsh
, just do sudo lchsh -i ec2-user
. – superhawk610 – 2020-02-22T00:32:29.633
5
On Ubuntu, inside GNOME terminal, making changes via chsh won't have the expected effect...
To get over this problem, do this:
Peace.
P.S. Don't have 10 reputation to post images, so all texty instructions. :)
You have the rep you need now. :P – pradyunsg – 2016-03-21T08:43:30.323
0
one line
sudo chsh -s $(which zsh) $(whoami)
Extra Info: after that you'll probably want to do this ones
git clone https://github.com/zdharma/fast-syntax-highlighting.git \
~/.oh-my-zsh/custom/plugins/fast-syntax-highlighting
git clone https://github.com/zsh-users/zsh-autosuggestions ${ZSH_CUSTOM:-~/.oh-my-zsh/custom}/plugins/zsh-autosuggestions
nano ~/.zshrc
find plugins=(git) Append zsh-autosuggestions & zsh-syntax-highlighting to plugins() like this
plugins=(git zsh-autosuggestions fast-syntax-highlighting)
source ~/.zshrc
5I use a lightly different version
sudo chsh -s $(which zsh) $(whoami)
– SergioAraujo – 2015-04-30T19:37:14.160getting a
chsh: /usr/local/bin/zsh: non-standard shell
message – Yar – 2016-07-01T16:26:16.133Since
chsh -s /bin/zsh
emits a password prompt, and the default AWS image gives you a ec2-user with a ssh key (don't know password) I had to dosudo passwd root
, then give a new password, thensudo passwd ec2-user
, then I could tochsh -s /bin/zsh
with the ec2-user's password (you do not need to sudo chsh) – Colin D – 2019-09-05T21:22:56.457I did try that, but with the root user!! My AMI Image has ubuntu rather than root. Had to switch to ubuntu user to change the shell! Thanks for the hint :) – Shripad Krishna – 2011-01-11T11:45:28.543
3@Paddy if you are root you can change it for another user by running
chsh -s /bin/zsh username
. – John T – 2011-01-11T11:47:21.023Awesome :) Much easier. Thanks for that info too. – Shripad Krishna – 2011-01-11T11:48:00.943
I'm getting:
chsh: /usr/local/bin/zsh is an invalid shell
– Jürgen Paul – 2013-02-26T04:13:50.7373@We are the World: You need to add /usr/local/bin/zsh as a new line to /etc/shells – Nate Parsons – 2013-06-04T17:54:48.560