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I'm trying to set fish as my default shell. It's installed on the system through apt-get and is listed in /etc/shells:

> which fish
/usr/bin/fish
> grep fish /etc/shells
/usr/bin/fish

I used chsh to switch from Bash to fish:

> chsh -s /usr/bin/fish

And my default shell has been changed in /etc/passwd:

> grep "myusername" /etc/passwd
myusername:x:1000:1000:Oh Spite,,,:/home/myusername:/usr/bin/fish

Awesome. Then I logged out and rebooted. Login shells (e.g., virtual TTYs and SSH) now start fish.

And yet, when I start a terminal with either gnome-terminal or urxvt, a bash session is started. Additionally, the SHELL variable is still set to /bin/bash.

Interestingly, Terminator does use fish as the default shell. But even in that session SHELL is set to /bin/bash. If I start urxvt from Terminator, urxvt starts a Bash session.

What else do I need to do to change my default shell to fish?

(See also this question, but this is not a duplicate because I have followed those instructions and rebooted. Many times now.)

ohspite
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  • Is your final target to start `fish` as the default shell for terminal ? also whats the output of `getent passwd myusername` now ? – heemayl Aug 18 '15 at 21:33
  • @heemayl Yes, having fish as the default shell is my goal. The output of `getent passwd myusername` is exactly the same as the `grep` output in the question (I forgot about `getent`.) – ohspite Aug 18 '15 at 21:36
  • What happens if you login from the TTYs? – muru Aug 18 '15 at 22:22
  • @muru Oh yes, I should have mentioned that login shells (virtual TTYs and ssh sessions) do start fish and `SHELL` is set to `/usr/bin/fish` in them. It is non-login shells that start Bash (except for Terminator). – ohspite Aug 18 '15 at 22:46

2 Answers2

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Most terminals (at least gnome-terminal, urxvt, and XTerm, for example) that are started within a desktop environment such as Unity will use the SHELL environment variable to select the shell when they are launched.

SHELL should automatically be set to your default shell listed in /etc/passwd, but the variable can be overwritten when you log in. Make sure you have not set SHELL=/bin/bash or something similar in a file that will affect your entire desktop session. Such files include:

  • ~/.profile
  • ~/.pam_environment
  • /etc/environment
  • maybe some other files edited by Ubuntu users less often, such as /etc/profile

Additionally if any scripts such as ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile are called by those other startup files and there is an export SHELL=/bin/bash line, that will also affect the entire desktop session.

I know it's acceptable/encouraged, but I still hate answering my own question. Nevertheless, this may be of some use to someone in the future. Thanks to @heemayl and @muru for helping me investigate.

ohspite
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  • Was `SHELL` overwritten by one of those files in your case? – muru Aug 19 '15 at 00:56
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    @muru It was. And me listing all of the options where it can happen is an attempt to be helpful to future readers, but also a smokescreen to try to cover my embarrassing oversight. – ohspite Aug 19 '15 at 01:06
  • @ohspite, care to share _how_ or _why_ your SHELL was overwritten? No matter how "embarrassing" this is it might be helpful to know a circumstance where this happen – MestreLion Nov 01 '19 at 06:05
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To set fish as the default shell for gnome-terminal, from gnome-terminal go to :

Edit > Profile Preferences

then go to Title and Command tab, you will get :

before

Change it as :

after

Now whenever you start a new instance of gnome-terminal, fish will be started instead of bash.

heemayl
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  • Thanks heemays. This would work for gnome-terminal, but I'm trying to set fish as the default shell for my user on the system, not for a particular application. In fact, I'm tempted just to put `exec fish` at the top of my Bash startup script, which would work for any terminal, but that shouldn't be necessary; I'm trying to figure out how to do it the proper way. – ohspite Aug 18 '15 at 21:51
  • @ohspite Your login shell is set to `fish`, but some applications may use `bash` ecxplicitely, you need to change manually for those..also note that there are differences between login and non-login shells anad the files they read while starting..your question does not seem properly directed now..could you please elaborate where/in what applications you are having problem with `fish` ? – heemayl Aug 18 '15 at 21:56
  • Thanks for helping me focus the question. I don't think each application needs to be set up independently; for example, `man urxvt` says by default the `SHELL` environment variable will be used. Perhaps the narrower question is "why is SHELL not set to the value in /etc/passwd after logging in", but that's not my true question so I was trying to avoid an XY problem. – ohspite Aug 18 '15 at 22:54