Shell management

Alpine Linux uses the BusyBox variant of the ash shell. This page explains various ways to change the default shell in Alpine Linux to other popular shells like bash, zsh, fish etc.. You can revert back to ash shell at anytime with the same steps.

Note: You need to log out and login again for these changes to take effect.

By hand

Edit /etc/passwd manually. An example line for a user named user is:

Contents of /etc/passwd

... user:x:1000:1000:user:/home/user:/bin/ash ...

Change /bin/ash to point to the path of a shell from /etc/shells. Take care to not delete/mangle the line, as it would make you unable to log in again. The user should be the user you are changing the default login shell for.

Using shadow

Download the required package:

# apk add shadow

And use chsh:

# chsh username

Now enter the path for the shell you want to use (e.g /bin/zsh) and press Enter to confirm this change. The shell should exist in /etc/shells.