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I ran a fresh install of garuda dragonised,it comes with a fish shell by default. I had no experience with this so asked the installer to add zsh -which it did along with config files.

Upon booting into the system I was still running fish but zsh appeared to be installed and have config in place so I tried chsh and a reboot on my login account.

Upon logging back in echo "$SHELL" will return /usr/bin/zsh but the active shell is very clearly still fish

To be honest I kinda gave up and decided to roll with fish yesterday but I would like to try to understand what might have happened...

I was very clear not to get confused between my own account and sudo - in fact I set both to zsh and rebooted again for good measure with no change to the actual shell presented (still fish) for either but with both reporting /usr/zsh or /usr/bin/zsh

if i try to run source ~/.zshrc then I get errors about assignment using = in fish, I should use SET HISTFILE instead

UPDATE: changed title to reflect new understanding, I have also removed zsh, all config and re-installed

  • I can run zsh manually and it seems to work fine
  • i am launching the shell from konsole via the gui

I am now thinking the call to launch konsole is probably binding a particular shell - any tips where to look would be appreciated

SwiftD
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  • what does `which /bin/sh` return – belkarx Mar 24 '22 at 16:02
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    Related: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/522907/shell-environment-variable-still-points-to-zsh-after-using-bash?noredirect=1&lq=1 – fuzzydrawrings Mar 24 '22 at 16:06
  • @belkarx `ẁhich /bin/sh` returns /bin/sh – SwiftD Mar 24 '22 at 16:30
  • @fuzzydrawings thanks, I'll have a read – SwiftD Mar 24 '22 at 16:31
  • @fuzzydrawings - im still reading that link but the accepted answer seems not applicable- if this was just an incorrect $SHELL variable then the zshrc would have parsed properly wouldn't it? or am i misunderstanding something – SwiftD Mar 24 '22 at 16:38
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    How did you use `chsh`? If you used it with `sudo`, you've changed root's login shell, not yours. Do you have a `.zshrc`, `.zprofile` or `.zshenv` file in your home directory? If so, does it say to start the `fish` shell? Can you start the `zsh` shell by typing `zsh`? – Kusalananda Mar 24 '22 at 16:38
  • @they no, I changed both for good measure - I saw another question where that was the issue so was very careful – SwiftD Mar 24 '22 at 16:40
  • What does `getent passwd yourusername` print? – Kusalananda Mar 24 '22 at 16:42
  • See also [Why would echo $shell come up with a blank output?](//unix.stackexchange.com/q/667271) and [Switching to another shell without copying environment variables](//unix.stackexchange.com/q/67603) – Stéphane Chazelas Mar 24 '22 at 17:14
  • @they yesterday I had .zshrc, and a .zhistory (that wasnt getting populated generally but had some entries from where i had explicitly launched zsh at some point) and maybe something else in my home, they were all set up by garuda. Since then I haveI deleted all those files and removed zsh completely. I have resinstalled and switched again to test. I now have the same situation with just a .zshrc file copied from /etc/skel. the output of getent passwd is: dan:x:1000:1000:dan:/home/dan:/usr/bin/zsh but i am still clearly in fish and i get same fish error parsing .zshrc – SwiftD Mar 24 '22 at 17:22
  • @StéphaneChazelas It is definitely not just an issue with the SHELL variable being incorrect because my fish configuration is working great whilst everything tells me I am using zsh - I am 100% using fish when I dont expect to be (honestly fish is great and I probably will stick with it I just want to know what is happening) – SwiftD Mar 24 '22 at 17:27
  • @they yes I seem to be able to start a zsh explicitly its just giving me fish by default and telling me its using zsh – SwiftD Mar 24 '22 at 17:29
  • something must be switch the shell to fish after it has been set to zsh (and not updating the SHELL variable when it does)... but i dont know what – SwiftD Mar 24 '22 at 17:36
  • `$SHELL` is the variable that determines your prefered shell. Applications such as xterm or vi that start or may start a shell for you will use that. That's all there is to that variable. It is set by `login` or other login managers to your *login shell* as defined in the `passwd` database. If `fish` is started in whatever terminal you're using, you need to determine how. In what context are we here. Is that in a terminal emulator, is that over ssh? – Stéphane Chazelas Mar 24 '22 at 17:39
  • @StéphaneChazelas im just updating the question to summarise - but I am launching the shell using the Konsole terminal and was just wondering if that is where the issue is, perhaps konsole is launching with a reference to the fish shell... that would make sense if konsole is ignoring my shell settings and leaving the $SHELL var as it is – SwiftD Mar 24 '22 at 17:48
  • What's the value of the `SHELL` environment variable that `konsole` itself returned on startup? What's the output (from a zsh shell) of `grep -z '^SHELL=' /proc/${^$(pidof konsole)}/environ | tr '\0' '\n'`? – Stéphane Chazelas Mar 24 '22 at 18:00
  • How was `konsole` started? What's the output of `ps -wo args -C konsole`? – Stéphane Chazelas Mar 24 '22 at 18:01
  • @StéphaneChazelas thanks for help - you were correct, i found a setting through the gui to bind a shell for konsole – SwiftD Mar 24 '22 at 18:16

2 Answers2

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Thank you all for your help in working through this.

It turned out to be a setting binding the shell to the Konsole terminal. There is a command line flag to pass this in when launching.

For the garuda KDE based desktop you can access this setting under settings->configure konsole-> edit profile from the konsole gui menus`

SwiftD
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Right clicking in the fish terminal then under configure profile under command changing it to /usr/bin/zsh solve my problem. It was stuck with /usr/bin/fish

Prince Azubuike
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