SysAdmins' Chronicles

To change your default login shell in Mac OS X Tiger and Leopard first we must find the options we have. This is done by

Prometheus$ cat /etc/shells 
# List of acceptable shells for chpass(1).
# Ftpd will not allow users to connect who are not using
# one of these shells.

/bin/bash
/bin/csh
/bin/ksh
/bin/sh
/bin/tcsh
/bin/zsh

Note: There are a few ways to actually go about changing the login shell, a few of these options are chpass, chsh, using dscl, etc.

For this tip we will use chpass and change our login shell to zsh.

Prometheus$ chsh -s /bin/zsh rvalente
Changing shell for rvalente.
Password for rvalente: 
Prometheus$

Enjoy using your new default shell