Effective Methods of changing Shells in UNIX - bash

I used to work with UNIX a couple years ago, and I am just starting to get back into it again. I was wondering if anyone could help me with a question.
For example, if I am in bash, I say chsh --shell /bin/tcsh after this I am prompted to enter my password. If I try to say echo $SHELL it will not tell me I have changed shells. It still tells me I am in bash, not C shell. So I have to exit and restart. Once I log back it, then it tells I am in C shell.
Is there a more effective method to change shells? One that does not require me having to log in and out?
Thank you in advance.

chsh(1): change your login shell
Once you change your shell with chsh, it should automatically login to that shell every time you open a terminal.
If you want to use a different shell temporary, just run that shell directly: "tcsh", "zsh", etc..
If you want to use a particular shell for a script use shebang "#!".
Example -- The following on the first line of a shell script will ensure the script is run with sh (and you can do this for any shell available on your system):
#!/bin/sh

Always check your current shell by using :
echo $0
That way you will get the exact process ( your current shell ) you are running. If you print $SHELL it will return to you the default shell that will be open when you login to the server which unless that's what you need its not reliable.
ubuntu$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash
ubuntu$ echo $0
-bash
ubuntu$ sh
\[\e[31m\]\u\[\e[m\]$ echo $SHELL
/bin/bash
\[\e[31m\]\u\[\e[m\]$ echo $0
sh
\[\e[31m\]\u\[\e[m\]$
Regards!

Related

Spawning background process under different user in bash

I know I can run this command to spawn a background process and get the PID:
PID=`$SCRIPT > /dev/null 2>&1 & echo $!`
and to run a command under different user:
su - $USER -c "$COMMAND"
I don't want the script to run as root and I can't quite figure out how to combine the two and get the PID of the spawned process.
Thanks!
I think you want the runuser command. General syntax:
runuser -l userNameHere -c 'command'
I suspect that if you set your $SCRIPT variable to the above (with appropriate changes), your first command will do what you want.
To elaborate on: See the following: - stackoverflow.com/questions/9119885/…
See particularly the following quote from Chris Dodd:
Unfortunately there's no easy way to do this prior to bash version 4, when $BASHPID was
introduced. One thing you can do is to write a tiny program that prints its parent PID:...
If you have bash 4 and BASHPID, see $$ in a script vs $$ in a subshell
I don't have version 4, so I can't provide an example of it's usage.
Or write a tiny C program which execvs it's arguments and make it setuid to USER.
Or even make a setuid shell script (not generally recommended). Hopefully the USER is fixed; if not, get the source for runuser, this is essentially what runuser (not a POSIX command) does.
PID=`su - $USER -c "$SCRIPT > /dev/null 2>&1 & echo $!"`
The problems with the your use of su (above) include:
the $! is being executed in the context of the -c sub-shell of su, not the current shell where PID is,
you're requesting that your SCRIPT be run as a login shell, so you don't even know if USER's shell supports $!,
you have no control over the parent-child process chain that su (and the user's shell) create.
IOW, when you use
PID=`$SCRIPT > /dev/null 2>&1 & echo $!`
there's only one program involved, bash, and two (maybe three?) processes that you pretty much have complete control over. When you throw su into the mix, that changes things much more than is apparent on the surface -- bash and su support similar arguments, right?!?
For obvious reasons, su does mucho magic to protect it and its' children's environment from attacks; it doesn't even like being put in the background....
It's kind of late, but here is a two liner will work, seems to need to be two so that it doesn't wait for the $SCRIPT to complete:
su $USER -c "$SCRIPT 2>&1 & >> $LogOrNull echo $! > /some/writeable/path"
PID="$(cat /some/writeable/path)"
/some/writeable/path will need to be writeable by $USER
And the user running these commands will need to have read access

How to source a csh script from inside a bash script

My default shell is bash. I have set some environment variables in my .bashrc file.
I installed a program which use .cshrc file. It contains the path to several cshell scripts.
When I run the following commands in the shell windows it works perfectly :
exec csh
source .cshrc
exec bash
I have tried to put these commands in bash script, unfortunately it didn't work.
is there another way to write a script in order to get the same result as running commands from a shell windows.
I hope my question is now clear
Many thanks for any help
WARNING : don't put the following script in your .bashrc, it will reload bash and so reload .bashrc again and again (stopable with C-c anyway)
Use preferable this script in your kit/CDS stuff startup script. (cadence presumably)
WARNING 2 : if anything in your file2source fails, the whole 'trick' stops.
Call this script : cshWrapper.csh
#! /bin/csh
# to launch using
# exec cshWrapper.csh file2source.sh
source $1
exec $SHELL -i
and launch it using
exec ./cshWrapper.csh file2source.sh
it will : launch csh, source your file and came back to the same parrent bash shell
Example :
$> ps
PID TTY TIME CMD
7065 pts/0 00:00:02 bash
$>exec ./cshWrapper.csh toggle.csh
file sourced
1
$> echo $$
7065
where in my case i use the file toggle.csh
#! /bin/csh
# source ./toggle.csh
if ! $?TOGGLE then
setenv TOGGLE 0
endif
if ($?TOGGLE) then
echo 'file sourced'
if ($TOGGLE == 0) then
setenv TOGGLE 1
else
setenv TOGGLE 0
endif
endif
echo $TOGGLE
Hope it helps
New proposal, since I faced another problem with exec.
exec kills whatever remains in the script, except if you force a fork by using a pipe after it `exec script |cat'. In such case if you have environment variable in the script, they are not spread back to the script itself, which is not what we want. The only solution I found is to use 3 files (let's call them for the example : main.bash that call first.cshrc and second.sh).
#! /bin/bash
#_main.bash_
exec /bin/csh -c "source /path_to_file/cshrc; exec /bin/bash -i -c /path_to_file/second.sh"
# after exec nothing remains (like Attila the Hun)
# the rest of the script is in 'second.sh'
With that manner, i can launch in a single script call, an old cshrc design kit, and still process some bash command after, and finally launch the main program in bash (let say virtuoso)

Difference between $0 and $SHELL

I would like to know the exact difference between $0 and $SHELL. I know that these two are used to know the shell info.
It would be great if some one explain with examples.
What does it indicate if both show different values as below ?
# echo $0
ksh
# echo $SHELL
/sbin/sh
#
SHELL is just an environment variable, while $0 is the path of the currently running program. The user should set SHELL to the value of the preferred shell, similar to the way the user sets PAGER and EDITOR. Any program that needs to spawn a shell should check the value of SHELL to determine which shell to invoke. SHELL is not the path of the shell you get when you login. It will not change when a new shell is run any more than PAGER will change if it is set to less but the user invokes more, or if EDITOR is set to vi and the user runs emacs. For instance:
$ echo $0 $SHELL
bash /bin/bash
$ exec csh
% echo $0 $SHELL
csh /bin/bash
$SHELL gives the full path to your default shell.
$0 gives the name of your current shell.

source .bashrc from .cshrc

Is it possible to source a .bshrc file from .cshrc in a non-interactive session?
I'm asking because tcsh is our default shell at work and the .cshrc has to be used to set up the environment initially.
However, I am not really familiar with the tcsh and I have my own set-up in bash, so right now I have the following lines at the end of my .cshrc file:
if ( $?prompt && -x /bin/bash) then
exec /bin/bash
endif
This works fine, loading my environment from .bashrc and giving me a bash prompt for interactive sessions but now I also need the same set-up for non-interactive sessions, e.g. to run a command remotely via SSH with all the correct PATHs etc.
I can't use 'exec' in that case but I can't figure out how to switch to bash and load the bash config files "non-interactively".
All our machines share the same home directory, so any changes to my local *rc files will affect the remote machiens as well.
Any ideas welcome - thank you for your help!
After some more research I'm now quite sure that this won't work, but of course feel free to prove me wrong!
To load the environment in bash I have to switch to a bash shell. Even if that is possible "in the background", i.e. without getting a prompt, it would still break any tcsh commands which would then be attempted to execute under bash.
Hmmmm, back to the drawing board...
If $command is set there are arguments to csh, so it is a remote shell command. This works for me in .cshrc:
if ($?command) then
echo Executing non-interactive command in bash: $command $*
exec /bin/bash -c "${command} $*"
endif
echo Interactive bash shell
exec bash -l
Test:
$ ssh remotehost set | grep BASH
BASH=/bin/bash
...
proves that it ran in Bash.

Tell if a user has SUed in a shell script?

I have a script which executes a git-pull when I log in. The problem is, if I su to a different user and preserve my environment with an su -lp, the script gets run again and usually gets messed up for various reasons because I'm the wrong user. Is there a way to determine in a shell script whether or not I'm currently SUing? I'm looking for a way that doesn't involve hard coding my username into the script, which is my current solution. I use Bash and ZSH as shells.
You could use the output of the who command with the id command:
WHO=`who am i | sed -e 's/ .*//'`
ID_WHO=`id -u $WHO`
ID=`id -u`
if [[ "$ID" = "$ID_WHO" ]]
then
echo "Not su"
else
echo "Is su"
fi
if test "$(id -u)" = "0";
: # commands executed for root
else
: # commands executed for non root
fi
If you are changing user identities with an suid executable, your real and effective user id will be different. But if use use su (or sudo), they'll both be set to the new user. This means that commands that call getuid() or geteuid() won't be useful.
A better method is to check who owns the terminal the script is being run on. This obviously won't work if the process has detached from it's terminal, but unless the script is being run by a daemon, this is unlikely. Try stat -c %U $(tty). I believe who am i will do the same thing on most Unix-like OSes as well.
You can use "$UID" environment variable.
If its value is ZERO, then the user has SUDOed.. Bcos root as $UID==0
Well.... on linux, if I su to another user the process su is in the new user's process list.
sudo... doesn't leave such pleasant things for you.
I'm using zsh... but I don't think anything in this is shell specific.
if:
%ps | grep " su$"
returns anything, then you're running in an su'd shell.
Note: there is a space before su$ in that to exclude command simply ending in su. Doesn't guard against any custom program/script called su, though.

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