check the valid login shell

To find the list of available shell packages under Red Hat Enterprise Linux / CentOS Linux / Fedora Linux, enter:

yum search shell

To find the list of available shell packages under Debian Linux / Ubuntu Linux, enter:

apt-cache search shell


/etc/shells is a text file which contains the full pathnames of valid login shells. This file is consulted by chsh and available to be queried by other programs such as ftp servers.

cat /etc/shells

Sample outputs:

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