man pages section 5: File Formats

shells(5)

Name

shells - shell database

Synopsis

/etc/shells

Description

The /etc/shells file contains a list of valid shells on the system. For each shell, a single line should be present consisting of the shell's absolute path. A hash mark (#) indicates the beginning of a comment; subsequent characters up to the end of the line are not interpreted. Blank lines are also ignored.

Applications can access the list of shells through getusershell(3C). If /etc/shells is not present, the default list of valid shells is:

/bin/bash /usr/bin/bash /bin/pfbash /usr/bin/pfbash /bin/csh /usr/bin/csh /bin/pfcsh /usr/bin/pfcsh /bin/jsh /usr/bin/jsh /sbin/jsh /usr/sbin/jsh /bin/ksh /usr/bin/ksh /bin/pfksh /usr/bin/pfksh /bin/ksh93 /usr/bin/ksh93 /bin/pfksh93 /usr/bin/pfksh93 /bin/sh /usr/bin/sh /bin/pfsh /usr/bin/pfsh /sbin/sh /usr/sbin/sh /sbin/pfsh /usr/sbin/pfsh   /usr/xpg4/bin/sh   /usr/xpg4/bin/pfsh /bin/tcsh /usr/bin/tcsh /bin/pftcsh /usr/bin/pftcsh /bin/zsh /usr/bin/zsh /bin/pfzsh /usr/bin/pfzsh

Invalid shells in /etc/shells could cause unexpected behavior, such as being unable to log in by way of ftp(1).

Files

/etc/shells

list of shells on system

Attributes

See attributes(7) for descriptions of the following attributes:

ATTRIBUTE TYPE ATTRIBUTE VALUE Availability system/core-os Interface Stability Committed

See Also

getusershell(3C), aliases(5), sendmail(8)

Notes

Restricted shells should not be listed in /etc/shells.