Enabling shell integration changes shell from Fish to Bash - unable to change back?

I'm running iTerm Build 2.9.20150626-nightly, with OSX 10.11 (DP2).

Plist is attached:

com.googlecode.iterm2.plist

I recently got the prompt about shell integration. I followed the instructions at http://iterm2.com/shell_integration.html to enable this - namely:

curl -L https://iterm2.com/misc/install_shell_integration.sh | bash

However, upon restarting, my shell seems to have changed from fish to bash.

Even entering in chsh -s /usr/local/bin/fish again and restarting iTerm doesn't seem to have an effect - iTerm seems to change the shell back to Bash.

In iTerm, Preferences, Profiles, General, the Command radio box is set to "Login shell" (which should be fish, I believe, based on chsh):

I assume this isn't intended behaviour?

What is the best way of changing the shell back?

Also, I should mention that every time I spin up a new shell in iTerm - including new tabs, or even new panes in tmux, it seems to default back to bash now - quite annoying.

I was literally about to file an issue about this (and will in a second). There are a couple of things that can go wrong here, so can you post a copy of your ~/.config/fish/config.fish, ~/.rc, ~/.bashrc, ~/.profile, ~/.bash_profile (any of those that exist) and the output of env?

As a temporary solution, you can switch from "Login shell" and enter /usr/local/bin/fish at "Command:".

.profile config.fish

Yup, I found that as well - I think I've managed to sort of fix things by changing "Login shell" to "Command", and also by setting the following in my ~/.tmux.conf:

set -g default-command /usr/local/bin/fish

However, I'm still curious as to what's going on, or why chsh has suddenly stopped working.

Note that the automatic command to install shell integration installed the bash version (even though chsh should have been set to chsh before), so I had to manually download and add the fish iTerm integration script.

Here's the output of env:

```TERM_PROGRAM=iTerm.app
TERM=screen
SHELL=/bin/bash
TMPDIR=/var/folders/9l/r3dzz8551579drqy2j8d6gwm0000gn/T/
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.s89awQ9Ee3/Render
USER=victorhooi
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.OXCzoUsdpd/Listeners
__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x1F5:0x0:0x0
TMUX=/private/var/folders/9l/r3dzz8551579drqy2j8d6gwm0000gn/T/tmux-501/default,50541,0
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/Users/victorhooi/.mongodb/versions/mongodb/current/bin
__fish_sysconfdir=/usr/local/Cellar/fish/HEAD/etc/fish
PWD=/Users/victorhooi
__fish_datadir=/usr/local/Cellar/fish/HEAD/share/fish
LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
ITERM_PROFILE=Default
XPC_FLAGS=0x0
TMUX_PANE=%0
XPC_SERVICE_NAME=0
SHLVL=2
HOME=/Users/victorhooi
__fish_help_dir=/usr/local/Cellar/fish/HEAD/share/doc/fish
ITERM_SESSION_ID=w0t0p1
LOGNAME=victorhooi
__fish_bin_dir=/usr/local/Cellar/fish/HEAD/bin
_=/usr/bin/env

I did notice that SHELL is set to Bash - so perhaps something isn't setup properly on my side? I thought chsh was all you needed to do...hmm.

Wait a second, something funky is going on here...

Here is the output for env from OSX's inbuilt Terminal app:

victorhooi@thadeus ~> env 
Apple_PubSub_Socket_Render=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.s89awQ9Ee3/Render
HOME=/Users/victorhooi
LANG=en_AU.UTF-8
LOGNAME=victorhooi
PATH=/Users/victorhooi/.mongodb/versions/mongodb/current/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin
PWD=/Users/victorhooi
SHELL=/usr/local/bin/fish
SHLVL=1
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=/private/tmp/com.apple.launchd.OXCzoUsdpd/Listeners
TERM=xterm-256color
TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal
TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=355
TERM_SESSION_ID=1AD17D14-16AC-4A1A-B1C7-84C93EC700D7
TMPDIR=/var/folders/9l/r3dzz8551579drqy2j8d6gwm0000gn/T/
USER=victorhooi
XPC_FLAGS=0x0
XPC_SERVICE_NAME=0
__CF_USER_TEXT_ENCODING=0x1F5:0x0:0x0
__fish_bin_dir=/usr/local/Cellar/fish/HEAD/bin
__fish_datadir=/usr/local/Cellar/fish/HEAD/share/fish
__fish_help_dir=/usr/local/Cellar/fish/HEAD/share/doc/fish
__fish_sysconfdir=/usr/local/Cellar/fish/HEAD/etc/fish

Note that SHELL appears to be set correctly here - so it seems as if somehow, in iTerm, my SHELL variable gets set to /bin/bash incorrectly?

Yeah, it's definitely a bug, and since I didn't get around to opening a separate issue for it yet, I'll detail it here: chsh on a "traditional" system edits an entry in a plaintext conf file, typically /etc/passwd. But on modern OS X (not sure since when) its kept as an attribute in OpenDirectory:

dscl . read /Users/$USER UserShell'

Terminal correctly uses this value; for some reason, present iTerm builds, it stays as /bin/bash regardless. @gnachman?

@victorhooi Also, I actually recommend one not use chsh, particularly with fish, or any shell that you'd need to edit /etc/shells to use. For instance what happens if your /usr/local/bin/fish gets a bad update from homebrew, or is otherwise corrupted or blown away? You're left without any shell at all (and this is when you'll really want that "Command:" option in iTerm or Terminal.app). Instead,

• set up all your environmental variables in .rc
• put [ -e ~/.rc ] && . ~/.rc in .profile and .bashrc
• put [ -e ~/.bashrc ] && . ~/.bashrc || [ -e ~/.rc ] && . ~/.rc in .bash_profile
• then end your .bash_profile with the line which fish >/dev/null 2>&1 && exec fish -il

This way:

• your environment stays the same, whether your in sh, bash, or fish
• you don't have to duplicate your env setup in ~/config/fish/config.fish
• it doesn't hardcode the path to fish, so it works even if its moved
• and even if fish gets deleted, you'll fall back to bash.

---

And of course, this also works for regular users who can't edit /etc/shells, which is probably the boat we'll all be in once were "rootless" in 10.11.

iTerm2 uses the $SHELL environment variable it was started with when you choose Login Shell. I need to change it to use directory services, obviously. I'm not sure why it would have changed on you, but does restarting iTerm2 help?

does restarting iTerm2 help?

Nope. I've noticed this for some time actually. I honestly don't know when it started. Possibly since 10.10... But because I use the method above, it never bothered me enough to do anything about it.

I wonder how this variable gets set in the first place? Like, where does _NSGetEnviron() get its information from?

mentioned in issue #3636

Commit 1ebe02ee adds support for opendirectory. Thanks for the pointer, @geoff-codes, I never knew about that system. Please try this build and see if it fixes your issue, @victorhooi http://iterm2.com/adhocbuilds/iTerm2-2_9_20150627_161835-adhoc.zip

Milestone changed to Ship 3.0

Restarting iTerm doesn't help.

Also, this seems to be recent, as I'm fairly sure I didn't have this issue before - possibly either with OSX 10.11, or with a recent nightly build of iTerm. Did something change?

I downloaded your build, can confirm that appears to fix the issue - I set iTerm's Command back to "Login shell", and removed the default-command line in .tmux.conf, and fish shell is now correctly started up both for iTerm, and in tmux.

Will this be in the next nightly? =)

Finally, this is for my own learning - how is the $SHELL variable actually set? As in, is it defined somewhere, or does iTerm/Terminal set it somehow? I'm a bit confused, because OSX's inbuilt terminal and iTerm seem to have different $SHELL variables (Terminal had fish, and iTerm has bash).

@geoff-codes Interesting, about not using chsh. I confess I don't know much about the background here - I was basically going off what brew info fish says:

    You will need to add:
      #{HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/bin/fish
    to /etc/shells. Run:
      chsh -s #{HOMEBREW_PREFIX}/bin/fish
    to make fish your default shell.

https://github.com/Homebrew/homebrew/blob/ce9a56dfbcba698b7b6f77e7d98a61874629030a/Library/Formula/fish.rb#L41-L45

@victorhooi Yeah, I've tried to get them to change that. It's really not so good an idea; again, if there's a bad commit made to fish.rb and you brew upgrade, you're hosed.

@gnachman This looks like an Apple bug feature to me. If you do shell script "env" in Script Editor, it also always shows SHELL=/bin/bash.

Finally, this is for my own learning - how is the $SHELL variable actually set?

Basically, we don't really know .

@victorhooi This change will be in the next nightly build.

@geoff-codes $SHELL is set by some mysterious system process, but it generally is correct. This is the first I've heard of us launching the wrong shell for a user.

I can tell you that on my systems $SHELL is /bin/tcsh when iTerm2 is launched. I wouldn't trust the output of "shell script 'env'" because shell scripts are generally run within bash implicitly.

Status changed to closed

I can tell you that on my systems $SHELL is /bin/tcsh when iTerm2 is launched.

@gnachman So... have you been upgrading the same user account since 10.2? Or set it that way?

I wouldn't trust the output of "shell script 'env'" because shell scripts are generally run within bash implicitly

Well technically, do shell script is done with sh (bash --posix). But anyway, in Automator, you can choose:

I can tell you that on my systems $SHELL is /bin/tcsh when iTerm2 is launched.

@gnachman So... have you been upgrading the same user account since 10.2? Or set it that way?

Definitely not! I think $SHELL is set correctly for most users, or I'd have heard about it by now, since iTerm2 used it to launch the proper shell for users whose profile was set to "Login shell" but were not launching into their home directory.