Selecting Your Default Linux Shell

When I got my server up and running, it was dumping me into a default C-Shell. I am familiar with the Bourne Again SHell, or BASH. I kept having to invoke the BASH shell upon login, which just get’s annoying. Here’s how I defaulted my user to use the BASH shell.

$ sudo vim /etc/passwd

This will give you a long listing of user accounts on your Linux OS. The items are a colon “:” sperated value list. Here’s a breakdown of what everything means:

username:encrypted password field:user id (UID):group id (GID):Real Name:Home Directory:Shell

So for my user to be defaulted to the BASH shell:

username:x:1000:1000::/home/username:/bin/bash