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I have a .bash_profile in my home directory, but it isn't getting run on login. If I do the following, then things seem to be as I expect:

ssh myhost
bash
source ~/.bash_profile

But normally that all happens on login. Thoughts?

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67% accept rate
Also make sure that you don't have a ~/.profile or ~/.bash_login, as only one of the three is sourced. (I forgot the exact order.) – grawity Sep 25 '09 at 15:20
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4 Answers

up vote 19 down vote accepted 
%> chsh

(enter your password and state the path to the shell you want to use)

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(+1) From the man page: chsh - change login shell. – nagul Sep 25 '09 at 12:20
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+1 - not sure why the OP decided that editing the password file was a better choice, but this is the best answer – kdgregory Sep 25 '09 at 12:51
Yeah beat me to it, this is the standard way. – John T Sep 25 '09 at 13:49
And on ubuntu the path to the shell you want to use is... /bin/bash (and /bin/sh is not the same) – Harry Wood Mar 2 at 1:01
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up vote 6 down vote

On top of akira's answer, you can also edit your /etc/passwd file to specify your default shell.

You will find a line like this Example:

john:x:1000:1000:john,,,:/home/john:/bin/sh

the shell is specified at the end.

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Better to use the 'chsh' command as suggested by akira -- less chance to screw something up by mistake. – Lars Haugseth Sep 25 '09 at 13:17
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not to mention 'chsh' is available when you can't write to /etc/passwd – quack quixote Oct 7 '09 at 11:30
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up vote 0 down vote

You might check your terminal program. It might be configured to run /bin/sh rather than /bin/bash

Bash executes .bash_profile only for login sessions. .bashrc is executed for all bash sessions, not only login sessions. Try sourcing .bash_profile from .bashrc (avoid circular dependency!) or configuring your terminal program to run /bin/bash -l as a shell program.

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terminal program has nothing to do with the problem because it is the sshd on the remote machine, which spawns the new shell. – akira Sep 26 '09 at 4:31
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up vote -1 down vote

One alternative is to rename your startup script into .profile This file is being source by most shell

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