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Change Leopard's Login Shell
Posted by Gina Trapani at 7:00 AM on March 4, 2008
Mac OS X Leopard only: Dig into advanced user settings on your Mac by Ctrl+clicking on an account name in the System Preferences>Accounts area. There you can change Leopard's default login shell, the account's home directory or short name, and other important, scary, things that are just daring you to mess with them. (Actually, don't, unless you really know what you're doing.) As for shell options? Mac OS Hints explains:
In the resulting Advanced Options screen, either type in the path to your preferred shell, or choose among the various shells already installed in /bin: bash, tcsh, sh, csh, zsh, or ksh.Do you prefer an alternative shell on your Mac? Why? Tell us in the comments.
Tags: leopard | mac os x | mac os x leopard | mac tip | terminal
Comments (AU Comments · US Comments)
Joey C
Posted August 20, 2008 2:23 PM
Always a good idea to make sure you have a very god provider.
quickf3d
Posted 8:53 AM 4/3/08
isn't this exactly what you could do with Onyx in Tiger? what's the difference?
quickf3d
bachya
Posted 9:18 AM 4/3/08
I've honestly never used a shell other than Bash ... which makes me wonder if I'm missing something. Bash has done all I've ever needed a shell to do.
(This is the same kind of discussion that occurs when long-time PHP programmers are jarring with Ruby people)
Anyone have a good reason to switch away from Bash?
bachya
dakrone
Posted 9:44 AM 4/3/08
I use ZSH, advanced globbing, completion and many many configurable options. Here's an example of just how crazy you can get, just with the prompt: [aperiodic.net]
dakrone
nettoyeur
Posted 10:07 AM 4/3/08
Yeah, I've always wanted a good rundown on the different shell types in a "if you want to do ___, then choose ____" format. I use bash b/c it seems to balance power with ease of configuration.
nettoyeur
Quine
Posted 10:33 AM 4/3/08
I use tcsh. I'm not really sure why though. I felt like switching to c shell but tcsh is just plain better it seems...but s far I haven't found anything about tcsh i really really like...its just like bash with a few minor diffs. I want to try ksh sometime, i hear it has awesome regex support.
Quine
cde
Posted 10:33 AM 4/3/08
I use bash because it shoulds better/funnier. "HULK BASH!"
cde
iandol
Posted 12:12 PM 4/3/08
All shells suck! They all seem to use old fashioned weird syntax. MS Powershell, with its nice object-oriented nature is way ahead of them. Why can't they use Ruby or something?
And why can't we get Fish shell for OS X?
[www.fishshell.org]
iandol
Daniel Griscom
Posted 12:12 PM 4/3/08
Real nerds don't do csh; here's a classic post telling why: [www.faqs.org]
And, from the same source, information about zsh: [www.faqs.org]
And, a high-level comparison of the different shells: [www.faqs.org]
Daniel Griscom
bjhanifin
Posted 1:15 PM 4/3/08
Doesn't work for me (on 10.5.2). If wonder you have to have more than one user for this to work?
bjhanifin
Peter Cavan
Posted 1:56 PM 4/3/08
@bjhanifin: You have to click the lock icon in the lower left corner first, then you can make changes to the accounts.
Peter Cavan
Gina Trapani
Posted 2:48 PM 4/3/08
@Peter Cavan: Yes, you're right--sorry I didn't mention that in the post!
Gina Trapani
ffm
Posted 4:07 AM 5/3/08
bash is awesome, but what you want is to use it in combination with "screen". If you set screen as your shell, however, it will cause an infinite loop, since screen starts your default shell.
ffm
shortname
Posted 5:42 AM 11/3/08
question: for a long time i've wanted to rename my home folder. (very danger!) what happens if i simply change the short name here and reboot. has anyone tried doing that?
shortname