CHSH(1)

🌸 chsh(1) — the chsh manual, bestie edition 🌸

okay so real quick: this is the man page for chsh, section 1 of the manual (User Commands, if you're keeping score 💅). it's short, it's sweet, and it's gonna change your entire login shell situation. let's go ✨

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✨ NAME ✨

chsh — change your login shell 🐚

like, literally that's the whole job. iconic honestly.

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🎀 SYNOPSIS 🎀

chsh [-s shell] [-l] [-h] [-V] [username|UID]

that's it. that's the whole vibe. no cap.

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🦋 DESCRIPTION 🦋

chsh is how you change your login shell, periodt. if you don't hand it a shell right there on the command line, it'll just prompt you for one — very "i'll wait, take your time bestie" energy 🫶

okay and this part matters: chsh supports non-local entries (kerberos, LDAP, etc.) if it's linked with libuser. if it's not? then you're gonna want ypchsh(1), lchsh(1), or literally any other implementation that handles non-local entries. iykyk 😭

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💅 OPTIONS 💅

• -s, --shell shell — tell it what your login shell should be. that's the one. that's the main character option 👑
• -l, --list-shells — prints out the list of shells that live in /etc/shells, then dips and exits. very "here's the menu, i'm out" of it 🍓
• -h, --help — shows the help text and exits. (the short option -h has only existed since version 2.30 — before that it was -u, which is now deprecated. rip -u 🪦)
• -V, --version — shows the version and exits. (short option -V is a version 2.39 thing — older versions used -v, which is now deprecated too. they really did a whole glow-up on these flags 💀)

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🧚 VALID SHELLS 🧚

okay so chsh will accept the full pathname of any executable file on the system. any of them. it's very trusting like that 🙈

but here's the catch for the non-root girlies: by default, non-root users only get shells that are actually listed in the /etc/shells file. root just gets a warning instead. and heads up — it can also be configured at compile-time to only issue a warning for all users, so the vibe check on your shell might differ depending on how it was built. just so you know ✨

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⭐ EXIT STATUS ⭐

• 0 — slayed. operation was successful 💖
• 1 — didn't slay. operation failed, or the command syntax wasn't valid 😭

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🌈 AUTHORS 🌈

Salvatore Valente <svalente@mit.edu> — thank you for your service king 🫡

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🔥 SEE ALSO 🔥

login(1), login.defs(5), passwd(5), shells(5)

go read shells(5) if you wanna know what's in that file. it's giving necessary context 🦋

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💀 REPORTING BUGS 💀

found a bug? bestie, take it to the issue tracker: <https://github.com/util-linux/util-linux/issues>

they'll handle it. probably. no promises but like, that's the process 🫶

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👑 AVAILABILITY 👑

the chsh command is part of the util-linux package, which you can download from the Linux Kernel Archive at <https://www.kernel.org/pub/linux/utils/util-linux/>

like, go get it. it's right there. 🌸

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ngl the whole thing is one of the shorter man pages out there — but every single flag still matters, so don't sleep on -l before you go switching your shell to something unhinged 💅

and that's a wrap, bestie! this page is from util-linux 2.42.4, dated 2026-09-21, and it's the CHSH(1) manual — go change that shell, you absolute icon 🎀✨🦋