SHELL environment variable keeps returning the value of default shell

bashenvironment-variableslinuxshell

I'm using a terminal emulator with bash as the default shell ,then printed the value of the environment variable SHELL to print the current shell and it did , but when i enter another shell i.e., zshell , it keep returning the first value of the default one .

How to get it to print out the value of the current shell i'm residing at ?

$ echo $SHELL 
/bin/bash

$ zsh 
unixnode% 

$ unixnode% echo $SHELL 
/bin/bash

Best Answer

When you're logged in with a login-in shell , the shell variable gets assigned to that shell .
Whenever you used a non-login shell such as like simply running the zsh from within the current login shell session , the value of the variable Shell will remain the same , yet if you want to have it changed to the other shell then you'll have to log-out and login back again into the other shell .

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Linux – change default shell from zsh to bash

Make sure /usr/bin/chsh has execute permissions by running sudo chmod a+x /usr/bin/chsh.

You should be able to run chsh using your own account. Otherwise you'd be setting root's shell. Try the following:

chsh -s $( which bash )

Linux – Where should I export an environment variable so that all combinations of bash/dash, interactive/non-interactive, login/non-login, will pick it up

Shell invocation is a bit of a complicated thing. The bash and dash man pages has INVOCATION sections about this.

In summary they says (there is more detail in the man page, you should read it):

When bash is                   | it reads
-------------------------------|----------
login shell                    | /etc/profile and then the first of ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login or ~/.profile that exists.
                               |
interactive non-login shell    | /etc/bash.bashrc then ~/.bashrc
                               |
non-interactive shell          | The contents of $BASH_ENV (if it exists)
                               |
interactive (as "sh")          | The contents of $ENV (if it exists)

When dash is                   | it reads
-------------------------------|---------
login shell                    | /etc/profile then .profile
                               |
interactive shell              | The contents of ENV (it it exists, can be set in .profile as well as in initial environment)

I don't know about other shells offhand as I never use any of them. Your best bet might be to set a couple environment variables to point at the common location script and manually source that (when appropriate) in the couple of cases that doesn't cover.

Best Answer

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