The shells file contains a list of login shells on the system. Applications use this file to determine whether a shell is valid. For each shell a single line should be present, consisting of the shell's path, relative to root.

For example, this file is consulted by chsh to determine whether a normal user may change the login shell for her own account. If the command name is not listed, the user will be denied of change.

It is a requirement for applications such as GDM which does not populate the face browser if it can't find /etc/shells or FTP daemons which traditionally disallow access to users with shells not included in this file.

cat > /etc/shells << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/shells

/bin/sh
/bin/bash

# End /etc/shells
EOF

Last updated on 2005-01-14 17:30:04 -0700