# Change shell on MAC OS X



## Tmonkey (Sep 13, 2010)

I see that the MAC I'm working on is running the bash shell when I open a terminal window. I have 2 questions regarding this -

1. Can I change the shell my terminals spawned under MAC OS X run in from bash to ksh?
2. If yes, how do I change my shell from ksh to bash?

MTIA (Many Thanks in Advance)

The Test Monkey


----------



## Wrigleyvillain (Sep 13, 2010)

Um Google? I found a post about it on Mac OS X hints but it's incredibly old and probably doesnt apply to your version of OS X.


----------



## Easy Rhino (Sep 13, 2010)

well if you havnt already checked google, my guess is that you need to execute chsh and then tell it ksh. of course you need to install ksh and make sure you tell the program which dir to install it to.


----------



## Tmonkey (Sep 13, 2010)

Easy Rhino said:


> well if you havnt already checked google, my guess is that you need to execute chsh and then tell it ksh. of course you need to install ksh and make sure you tell the program which dir to install it to.



Cool, 

Thanks


----------



## streetfighter 2 (Sep 13, 2010)

Curious.  

Maybe I don't understand the question but don't you just type "bash", or "ksh", or "tcsh", etc. at the prompt and it'll change your shell?


----------



## Easy Rhino (Sep 14, 2010)

streetfighter 2 said:


> Curious.
> 
> Maybe I don't understand the question but don't you just type "bash", or "ksh", or "tcsh", etc. at the prompt and it'll change your shell?



in linux, yes. i am not sure about osx. it probably is fairly similiar if it is no the same. of course, you do have to have the shells installed first.


----------



## Tmonkey (Sep 14, 2010)

streetfighter 2 said:


> Curious.
> 
> Maybe I don't understand the question but don't you just type "bash", or "ksh", or "tcsh", etc. at the prompt and it'll change your shell?



I'm not sure, it has bee a while since I have worked with UNIX or Linux and I am brand new to BSD.  It has been my experience in the past that specifying and configuring the shell allows you to customize your environment.  I prefer ksh because I like vi and the ksh allows you to use vi commands on the command line.  I also like the vi file navigation for finding previous commands from the history file.

I'm curious about how to set up my terminal so that when I start it I get my "customized" environment without having to configure it each time.


----------



## streetfighter 2 (Sep 14, 2010)

Tmonkey said:


> I'm not sure, it has bee a while since I have worked with UNIX or Linux and I am brand new to BSD.  It has been my experience in the past that specifying and configuring the shell allows you to customize your environment.  I prefer ksh because I like vi and the ksh allows you to use vi commands on the command line.  I also like the vi file navigation for finding previous commands from the history file.



I've got OS X 10.5.5 running in a-- Err... *Genuine* mac (strictly for testing purposes).  I have no problem switching between bash, tcsh, and ksh just by typing them in on the commandline.



Tmonkey said:


> I'm curious about how to set up my terminal so that when I start it I get my "customized" environment without having to configure it each time.



You can open terminal then go to Preferences and edit the startup options.

If you're feeling frisky I'm betting there is something like a ".terminalrc" that you can configure till you die of over-customization.


----------

