shell changing problems!
 

hi i have a problem, when i am in one shell e.g. bash and i use chsh to change to csh and it says it is done, i type the finger command and it confirms this change.

however, if i type env the shell is the same as it was before the change AND what is weirder is if i try and type a csh command like setenv or something it doesn't recognise it but it does recognise a bash command like export, therefore it must still be the same?

this happens when i login as normal or as root

i am using redhat 9, if this makes a difference?

any ideas would be great!

Read the man page for chsh, it changes your login shell, not your currently running shell.

do you think maybe your csh is a symlink to bash?

you can also use kuser to chage your shell.

csh should never be a symlink to bash, they are different kinds of shells. csh is a C-shell, while BASH is a Bourne shell, different syntax, different built-in command set, etc. Shell scripts which expects csh and gets bash will fail.

"should never" is right. you never know what some
crazy script might do though. I was installing turnkey
linux, and it did a bunch of weirdo stuff like deleting
my /usr/bin/c++, and a bunch of other similar stuff.
maybe it would set stuff back like it was after the script
completed, but it didn't complete.
seriously, i found in the scripts in that turnkey where it
deletes /usr/bin/c++. luckily mine was a symlink. i
was really suprised when i found that script. it deletes
and moves other system stuff around too.