When I started a terminal on my Debian Linux I had sh-3.2:~$ instead of MyUsername:~$ as I used to have before. My ".bashrc" file didn't work anymore.
In order to see which shell I'm running I had to show the output of the SHELL variable as defined in the in the PATH :
sh-3.2:~$ echo $SHELL
The respond is :
sh-3.2:~$ /bin/sh
As I want to use the bash shell I have to change my shell. But before that, I woulds like to list the shells that are installed on my system so I typed :
sh-3.2:~$ cat /etc/shells
I got :
/bin/csh /bin/sh /usr/bin/es /usr/bin/ksh /bin/ksh /usr/bin/rc /usr/bin/tcsh /bin/tcsh /usr/bin/esh /bin/dash /bin/bash /bin/rbash
To change my shell from sh to bash I used the command chsh and typed the path of the bash shell :
sh-3.2:~$ chsh
Enter the new value, or press return for the default
Login Shell [/bin/bash]: /bin/bash
I logged out then in, for my new shell to work.
Starting a terminal gave me :
MyUsername@Computer:~$
Discussion
Hi,
Had a similar problem and came across your article. In the end I discovered that when you create a user in Debian, you have to specify the shell at creation, i.e,
useradd -m -s /bin/bash <someuser>
Otherwise, it default to /bin/sh which gives that weird sh-3.2 prompt.
To change the shell: modifying /etc/passwd is not enough; manually defining a variable $SHELL in “autoexec” files is not enough; chsh did the work!