コマンドインタプリタ (シェル) はコンピュータのユーザが最初に触れるものですから、かなり使いやすくなければいけません。ほとんどのシェルは、挙動 (自動補完、プロンプトテキストなど) を設定する初期化スクリプトを使います。
標準的なシェルである bash
は「対話型」シェル用に /etc/bash.bashrc
初期化スクリプトを使い、「ログイン」シェル用に /etc/profile
を使います。
簡単に言うと、ログインシェルはローカルおよびリモートの ssh
経由でコンソールにログインするか、明確に bash --login
コマンドを実行してログインする際に実行されます。ログインシェルか否かに関わらず、シェルは対話的 (たとえば xterm
系ターミナルの中で実行される場合) にもなれば、一方で非対話的 (スクリプトとして実行される場合) にもなります。
For bash
, it is useful to install and activate “automatic completion”. The package bash-completion contains these completions for most common programs and is usually enabled if the user's .bashrc
configuration file was copied from /etc/skel/.bashrc
. Otherwise it can be enabled via /etc/bash.bashrc
(simply uncomment a few lines) or /etc/profile
.
In addition to these common scripts, each user can create their own ~/.bashrc
and ~/.bash_profile
to configure their shell. The most common changes are the addition of aliases; these are words that are automatically replaced with the execution of a command, which makes it faster to invoke that command. For instance, you could create the la
alias for the command ls -la | less
command; then you only have to type la
to inspect the contents of a directory in detail. Please note that the shell needs to be reinitialized after adding an alias, e.g. by starting a new shell.
Setting default environment variables is an important element of shell configuration. Leaving aside the variables specific to a shell, it is preferable to place system wide variables in the /etc/environment
file, since it is used by the various programs likely to initiate a shell session. Variables typically defined there include ORGANIZATION
, which usually contains the name of the company or organization, and HTTP_PROXY
, which indicates the existence and location of an HTTP proxy. Other options include to set system wide variables via scripts in /etc/profile.d
, or session wide variables via .pam_environment
or .profile
, where the latter can override any definition contained in the first. The file /etc/default/locale
is meant to contain system wide locale related environment variables.