Differences between /usr/bin/login and /usr/bin/bash

Question

Terminal.app has the setting "Shells open with:" with the option "Default login shell (/usr/bin/login)", and "Command (complete path)" that by default contains "/usr/bin/bash". The dafault option for that setting is "Default login shell (/usr/bin/login)".

What is the difference between /usr/bin/login, and /usr/bin/bash? Which one should be choose as default shell?

Answer 1

/usr/bin/login is not a shell; it is a program used to login to a system. It manages the process of logging in to a system. As a user of a properly configured system, you should never have to concern yourself with /usr/bin/login. If you are curious about it anyway, read

man login

A shell is run after the login process has completed. It gives the user a text-based command-line interface to the facilities of the operating system, including running other programs. /usr/bin/bash is a good choice for a default shell. You can read more about bash by executing

man bash

Both of those man commands may be executed at the shell prompt.

Answer 2

They are two very different things, and only commonality is that both usually run at the beginning of loggin in a user and both run a configuration dot-file (.login and .bashrc) that are essencially shell scripts. In addition bash, like many modern shells, also allows you to switch between users, which is one of the main purposes of login

In detail:

login is a program used to log in a user, at the end of which the shell (aka command line interpreter) is executed.

login only knows how to do one thing - log in a user (athenticate using username/password, set some environmental variables like TERM and PATH, and execute a couple of on-login admin tasks - see the link for details.

A unix shell (of which bash is an example of) is a command line interpreter coupled with a script interpreter, and its function is to accept input (from the user or supplied programmatically) and execute requested commands.

As far as I'm aware, login can not be used as a shell at all as it has no functionality of a command line interpreter.

Answer 3

% man login

 login  is  used  when  signing  onto  a system.  It can also be used to
   switch from one user to another at any time (most  modern  shells  have
   support for this feature built into them, however).


% man bash

  Bash  is  an  sh-compatible  command language interpreter that executes
   commands read from the standard input or from a file.

so, if you have to pick one shell out of your two given choices, it is clearly bash.

Answer 4

/usr/bin/bash

This is built linux kernel in Mac OS. Then I think it is almost the same when you get the command in linux. The default shell should be bash.