Coder.com•2w ago

Set zsh as default shell

I'm just getting started with coder.com - another team at my company set up an instance. I tried using chsh to switch my default shell to zsh, but new vscode sessions are still using bash. Restarting the workspace reset the shell to bash again. What's the recommended way to get my shell to zsh by default? Will I need to build my own workspace AMI or something? Thanks in advance!

7 Replies

Codercord•2w ago

<#1303147690338684978>

Category

Help needed

Product

Coder OSS (v2)

Platform

Linux

Logs

Please post any relevant logs/error messages.

Atif•2w ago

You should ask your template admin to add dotfiles modules to the template, and then you can use your dotfiles to customize to your environment. https://registry.coder.com/modules/dotfiles

Dotfiles - Coder Registry

Allow developers to optionally bring their own dotfiles repository to customize their shell and IDE settings!

dataikeOP•2w ago

Thanks! that's supported, but I'm not clear on what I'd put into a dotfiles repo to make zsh the default. I was planning on chsh, but seems like that doesn't work. Do you know of any example repo that switches the default shell?

Phorcys•2w ago

yes, you'd use chsh here's a script I wrote to change the shell using chsh

#!/usr/bin/env zsh

if [ "$USER" != "root" ]; then
    exit 1
fi

CHSH_COMMAND="chsh"
CHSH_ARGS=("-s" "${2:-$(which zsh)}" "${1:-$USER}")
CHSH_PAM="/etc/pam.d/chsh"

CHSH_EXIT=2

if grep -q required $CHSH_PAM; then
    echo "[+] Changing PAM policy for chsh"
    sed s/required/sufficient/g -i /etc/pam.d/chsh

    echo "[+] Setting default shell"
    $CHSH_COMMAND ${CHSH_ARGS[@]}
    CHSH_EXIT=$?

    echo "[+] Reverting PAM policy for chsh"
    sed s/sufficient/required/g -i /etc/pam.d/chsh
else
    $CHSH_COMMAND ${CHSH_ARGS[@]}
    CHSH_EXIT=$?
fi

exit $CHSH_EXIT

#!/usr/bin/env zsh

if [ "$USER" != "root" ]; then
    exit 1
fi

CHSH_COMMAND="chsh"
CHSH_ARGS=("-s" "${2:-$(which zsh)}" "${1:-$USER}")
CHSH_PAM="/etc/pam.d/chsh"

CHSH_EXIT=2

if grep -q required $CHSH_PAM; then
    echo "[+] Changing PAM policy for chsh"
    sed s/required/sufficient/g -i /etc/pam.d/chsh

    echo "[+] Setting default shell"
    $CHSH_COMMAND ${CHSH_ARGS[@]}
    CHSH_EXIT=$?

    echo "[+] Reverting PAM policy for chsh"
    sed s/sufficient/required/g -i /etc/pam.d/chsh
else
    $CHSH_COMMAND ${CHSH_ARGS[@]}
    CHSH_EXIT=$?
fi

exit $CHSH_EXIT

you run it as root as ./changeshell.sh <user> <shell> I can make a Coder module to switch the shell if you want

dataikeOP•2w ago

thanks Theo! I'll give it a try.

Phorcys•2w ago

let me know how it goes!

dataikeOP•2w ago

I tried this today, but it looks like our installation runs dotfiles/install.sh as coder not root (so the above just exits 1). So I tried switching the script to just sudo chsh -s /usr/bin/zsh coder which runs, but the shell I get after connecting is still bash. I'll follow up with the folks that set up our installation to see if they have ideas

Gaming

Programming

Set zsh as default shell