tcsh

[Jerry Peek]

In article <3693 at udccvax1.acs.udel.EDU> don at vax1.acs.udel.EDU (Donald R Lloyd) writes:
> I've been trying to change from csh to tcsh for a while now with no
> luck whatsoever. I no several people who have changed over with no
> problems, but I can't seem to get it to work

> chsh in any other combination I've tried tells me I must specify
> either csh or sh.  I know tcsh is in /usr/local, and I know a number
> of people have made it their default shell.  What am I doing wrong?

I'm not sure this will help, because you say other users have been able to
change shells.  Maybe they had a superuser edit the /etc/passwd file directly
and set tcsh as their login shell.

But a lot of systems (I'm not sure which) have a file called /etc/shells. 
It lists the shells you can use as a login shell.  If you have one of these
on your system, be sure that /usr/local/tcsh is listed on one line of the
file.  (See the getusershell(3) man page.)  Without /etc/shells, you can't
chsh to anything but sh and csh (on the systems I know about, at least).

BTW, /etc/shells is there for security.  Don't put untested shells in the file.

--Jerry Peek; Syracuse University Academic Computing Services; Syracuse, NY
  jdpeek at rodan.acs.syr.edu, jdpeek at suvm.bitnet
  +1 315 443-3995