hi, i am trying to get a program running and am finding it very difficult and i think that i need some guidence! firstly to change the shell i am in do i type chsh then type the new shell as i do this, and when i type finger it says the new shell but if i type env, it says the name of the old shell.

secondly, i need to set an enviroment variable, i think i get what this means but i don't know how to do it, why doesn't typing work?:

setenv FREESURFER_HOME /home/andy/freesurfer

where the enviroment (i presume is FREESURFER_HOME) and the /home/andy/freesurfer is where all the stuff for it lives on my hard-drive

also any good online linux for dummies type guides in relation to this would be good!

thanks

andy

I am not sure about how to change shells. I use bash myself and haven't found need to change.

To set an environment variable try the following:
export FREESURFER_HOME=/home/andy/freesurfer

If you want this to be a permanent variable add it to your ~/.bashrc file or equivalent.

This may be different in other shells, but this works for bash. I am not sure about guides for this in particular, but you may want to check out http://www.linuxnewbie.net/ or go googling.

Hope this helps,

PhilD

chsh can change your shell

for set a variable in csh
i think it's
set A=B
export A
you can skip the set with bash and
export A=B