chsh(1) — Linux manual page

NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | OPTIONS | NOTE | FILES | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON

CHSH(1)                         User Commands                        CHSH(1)

NAME top

       chsh - change login shell

SYNOPSIS top

       chsh [options] [LOGIN]

DESCRIPTION top

       The chsh command changes the user login shell. This determines the
       name of the user's initial login command. A normal user may only
       change the login shell for her own account; the superuser may change
       the login shell for any account.

OPTIONS top

       The options which apply to the chsh command are:

       -h, --help
           Display help message and exit.

       -R, --root CHROOT_DIR
           Apply changes in the CHROOT_DIR directory and use the
           configuration files from the CHROOT_DIR directory.

       -s, --shell SHELL
           The name of the user's new login shell. Setting this field to
           blank causes the system to select the default login shell.

       If the -s option is not selected, chsh operates in an interactive
       fashion, prompting the user with the current login shell. Enter the
       new value to change the shell, or leave the line blank to use the
       current one. The current shell is displayed between a pair of [ ]
       marks.

NOTE top

       The only restriction placed on the login shell is that the command
       name must be listed in /etc/shells, unless the invoker is the
       superuser, and then any value may be added. An account with a
       restricted login shell may not change her login shell. For this
       reason, placing /bin/rsh in /etc/shells is discouraged since
       accidentally changing to a restricted shell would prevent the user
       from ever changing her login shell back to its original value.

FILES top

       /etc/passwd
           User account information.

       /etc/shells
           List of valid login shells.

       /etc/login.defs
           Shadow password suite configuration.

SEE ALSO top

       chfn(1), login.defs(5), passwd(5).

COLOPHON top

       This page is part of the shadow-utils (utilities for managing
       accounts and shadow password files) project.  Information about the
       project can be found at ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩.  If
       you have a bug report for this manual page, send it to
       pkg-shadow-devel@alioth-lists.debian.net.  This page was obtained
       from the project's upstream Git repository
       ⟨https://github.com/shadow-maint/shadow⟩ on 2020-08-13.  (At that
       time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in the repos‐
       itory was 2020-08-13.)  If you discover any rendering problems in
       this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a better or
       more up-to-date source for the page, or you have corrections or
       improvements to the information in this COLOPHON (which is not part
       of the original manual page), send a mail to man-pages@man7.org

shadow-utils 4.8.1               08/13/2020                          CHSH(1)