Linux® users are often surprised to find that Bash is not the default shell in FreeBSD. In fact, Bash is not even in the default installation. Instead, FreeBSD uses tcsh(1) as the default shell. However, Bash and other shells are available for installation using the FreeBSD Packages and Ports Collection.
After installing another shell, use chsh(1) to change
a user's default shell. It is recommended that the
root
user's default
shell remain unchanged since shells which are not included in
the base distribution are installed to
/usr/local/bin
. In the event of a problem,
the file system where /usr/local/bin
is
located may not be mounted. In this case, root
would not have access to
its default shell, preventing root
from logging in and fixing
the problem.
All FreeBSD documents are available for download at http://ftp.FreeBSD.org/pub/FreeBSD/doc/
Questions that are not answered by the
documentation may be
sent to <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.org>.
Send questions about this document to <freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.org>.