Login shell

The login shell on all CÉCI clusters is Bash. This is defined in the central user directory and cannot be changed on the clusters with the usual chsh or chsh.ldap Linux commands.

There is however a workaround, illustrated here with zsh and tcsh. The first step is to check that the shell you want to use is installed on the cluster with the which command.

which zsh
which tcsh

When the shell is not installed, you can either request it to be installed by the system administrators or install it by yourself using the methods described earlier in this section.

Then you can add this to your .bash_profile file:

export SHELL=$(which zsh)
exec $SHELL -l

or

export SHELL=$(which tcsh)
exec $SHELL -l

This will result in the shell of your choice replacing the Bash process as soon as it starts. Exiting the shell will disconnect from the cluster as expected.

Warning

We do not offer support for the module system with another shell than Bash. If the module command does not work with the shell you chose, please refer to the lmod documentation.