Can dash replace bash as my default shell?
Solution 1
Shells have two uses: to run scripts, and for an interactive command line.
Dash is designed to be a fast, efficient shell for scripting. It has next to no nice features for interactive use. It doesn't have fancy prompts, command line editing features or command history.
You can make dash your login shell. It will read ~/.profile
, same as other Bourne-style shells (bash reads it unless the bash-specific ~/.bash_profile
is present). Dash also reads ENV
when it's running interactively, like most modern Bourne-style shells.¹
For interactive use, use a more capable shell: fish, zsh or bash. Most of the code in your .bashrc
is specific to bash, apart from the alias definitions which would work in other shells.
Recommended background reading: Difference between Login Shell and Non-Login Shell?
¹ Some older Bourne-style shells read ENV when they started non-interactively, but I don't think any modern version does it. Ash stopped doing this in 2001.
Solution 2
Lots of the commands in your .bashrc
are bash
-specific. Things like HISTCONTROL
aren't relevant to dash
. Likewise for the command completion. Aliases will work however.
Read the manpage for dash
and check the manpage for each thing you're doing in your .bashrc
to see whether it's applicable to dash
.
The real question you're asking is not very clear: do you just want dash
installed as /bin/sh
, or do you also really want dash as your login shell? If the latter, then chsh
is the right way; otherwise you just need to install dash
and the installation will ask whether you want dash to be the default system shell (and then choose "yes"). If you want to change your answer, run dpkg-reconfigure dash
.
Solution 3
You can easily try things out for yourself and see if they are working without changing your current login shell.
Apart from /etc/profile
and ~/.profile
, dash
will read the file pointed to by an environment variable ENV
when starting interactively so:
ENV=~/.bashrc dash
or better make a copy of your ~/.bashrc
to ~/.dashrc
and comment out/delete what you don't need/is not working. Once you have everything to you liking you can add a line
ENV=~/.dashrc
to your ~/.profile
and change your default shell.
From man dash
:
... If the environment variable ENV is set on entry to an interac‐
tive shell, or is set in the .profile of a login shell, the shell next
reads commands from the file named in ENV. Therefore, a user should
place commands that are to be executed only at login time in the
.profile file, and commands that are executed for every interactive
shell inside the ENV file. To set the ENV variable to some file, place
the following line in your .profile of your home directory
ENV=$HOME/.shinit; export ENV
substituting for “.shinit” any filename you wish.
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shirish
A GNU/Linux and Debian user. Debian user for more than 5 years and yet still feel like a kid who has just started using the system yesterday.
Updated on September 18, 2022Comments
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shirish almost 2 years
From what I read,
dash
can be made as a shell by using the command~$ chsh shirish Password: Changing the login shell for shirish Enter the new value, or press ENTER for the default Login Shell [/bin/bash]:
I just need dash installed and give the path of the login shell /bin/dash. If I do that it doesn't read
.bashrc
but probably is reading.profile
. This is my.bashrc
could I just cut and paste.bashrc
and dash will behave exactly as bash did in reference to history size, the kind of prompt and the cowsay instance I want or not?Here's my
.bashrc
.$ cat .bashrc # ~/.bashrc: executed by bash(1) for non-login shells. # see /usr/share/doc/bash/examples/startup-files (in the package bash-doc) # for examples # If not running interactively, don't do anything case $- in *i*) ;; *) return;; esac # don't put duplicate lines or lines starting with space in the history. # See bash(1) for more options HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth # append to the history file, don't overwrite it shopt -s histappend # for setting history length see HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE in bash(1) HISTSIZE=3000 HISTFILESIZE=3000 HISTTIMEFORMAT="%F %T" # check the window size after each command and, if necessary, # update the values of LINES and COLUMNS. shopt -s checkwinsize # If set, the pattern "**" used in a pathname expansion context will # match all files and zero or more directories and subdirectories. #shopt -s globstar # make less more friendly for non-text input files, see lesspipe(1) #[ -x /usr/bin/lesspipe ] && eval "$(SHELL=/bin/sh lesspipe)" # set variable identifying the chroot you work in (used in the prompt below) if [ -z "${debian_chroot:-}" ] && [ -r /etc/debian_chroot ]; then debian_chroot=$(cat /etc/debian_chroot) fi # set a fancy prompt (non-color, unless we know we "want" color) case "$TERM" in xterm-color) color_prompt=yes;; esac # uncomment for a colored prompt, if the terminal has the capability; turned # off by default to not distract the user: the focus in a terminal window # should be on the output of commands, not on the prompt #force_color_prompt=yes if [ -n "$force_color_prompt" ]; then if [ -x /usr/bin/tput ] && tput setaf 1 >&/dev/null; then # We have color support; assume it's compliant with Ecma-48 # (ISO/IEC-6429). (Lack of such support is extremely rare, and such # a case would tend to support setf rather than setaf.) color_prompt=yes else color_prompt= fi fi # enable bash completion in interactive shells if ! shopt -oq posix; then if [ -f /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then . /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion elif [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then . /etc/bash_completion fi fi if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ ' else PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\t \u@\h:\w\$ ' fi unset color_prompt force_color_prompt # If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir case "$TERM" in xterm*|rxvt*) PS1="\[\e]0;${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h: \w\a\]$PS1" ;; *) ;; esac # enable color support of ls and also add handy aliases if [ -x /usr/bin/dircolors ]; then test -r ~/.dircolors && eval "$(dircolors -b ~/.dircolors)" || eval "$(dircolors -b)" alias ls='ls --color=auto' alias cls='clear' alias ll='ls -l' alias aptfn='sudo aptitude forget-new' alias aptn="aptitude search '~N'" alias gi='bash /home/shirish/git-info.sh' alias apto='aptitude search ~o' alias grep='grep --color=auto' alias aptc="aptitude search '~c'" alias copy="rsync --progress -ravz" alias vlc="vlc -vv" alias tor="/home/shirish/.local/share/torbrowser/tbb/x86_64/tor-browser_en-US/start-tor-browser" #alias dir='dir --color=auto' #alias vdir='vdir --color=auto' #alias grep='grep --color=auto' #alias fgrep='fgrep --color=auto' #alias egrep='egrep --color=auto' fi # some more ls aliases #alias la='ls -A' #alias l='ls -CF' # Alias definitions. # You may want to put all your additions into a separate file like # ~/.bash_aliases, instead of adding them here directly. # See /usr/share/doc/bash-doc/examples in the bash-doc package. #if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then # . ~/.bash_aliases #fi # from http://askubuntu.com/questions/16428/showing-a-cowsay-fortune-in-every-new-terminal-session if [ -x /usr/games/cowsay -a -x /usr/games/fortune ]; then fortune | cowsay
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Harold Fischer over 5 yearsCould you give an example where using the ENV variable is a "bad idea"? I set ENV to my .shrc file on FreeBSD and I don't want do it if it can cause problems.
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Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' over 5 years@HaroldFischer See my footnote. Typically:
MYVAR=some-different-value sh -c 'do something with a changed $MYVAR'
— if the$ENV
file setsMYVAR
, this won't work since it'll run with the value ofMYVAR
overridden by$ENV
. -
Harold Fischer over 5 yearsI can't replicate that behavior in dash or ash. The
$ENV
file is not sourced in a subshell unless I explicitly usesh -i -c 'echo "$MYVAR"'
; my$ENV
file isn't overriding anything unless I explicitly force the shell to behave interactively -
Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' over 5 years@HaroldFischer You're right. Ash stopped reading
$ENV
when not interactive in 2001. There doesn't seem to be a modern sh version that reads$ENV
when not interactive. Thanks, I've corrected my answer.