Panther uses the Bash shell by default
November 3rd, 2003 by admin
MacOS X 10.3 “Panther” uses the bash (bourne-again shell) by default, as opposed tcsh which has been used in all previous versions of MacOS X. Any enviromental labels you changed by editing your .cshrc file won’t have any effect in bash.
The default shell in MacOS X is stored in the NetInfo database, and if you chose the “Upgrade” option, I don’t believe the database is altered. However, “Archive and Install” or a fresh install will create a new netinfo database and your shell will be switched.
So, you can learn the bash shell and how to use .bashrc files, or you can switch back to tcsh. I have done the latter. I’m told the bash shell is very cool, but I don’t see the need to learn how to deal with it and I think iraf sortof expects a c-shell anyway.
So, how to switch back? You can use the NetInfo Manager (in /Applications/Utilities/) to edit your shell. Navigate in the Netinfo domain to /Users/you and then change the “shell” property to /bin/tcsh. You’re back in business.
Alternatively you can do this in the command line, obviously replacing “you” with your user name…
% niutil -createprop . /users/you shell /bin/tcsh
You may need to do the above command with sudo if you get permission complaints
It might be wise to change the iraf user’s shell as well, done in the same way as above except for the Iraf User. Though I’m not sure if this is neccesary.
This tip is pretty much the same as this one at MacOSX Hints.
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