How to change the default shell on a AWS instance

amazon ec2shell

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!

Best Answer

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.

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