How to make zsh run as a login shell on Mac OS X (in iTerm)?

Question

When zsh is set as a login shell on Mac OS X, when it is started by iTerm, zsh doesn't consider that it's being run as a login shell, although it's started as ‘-zsh’ (‘-’ is put as the first character of arg[0]) which is supposed to mean that it should start as a login shell.

So, when I set the login shell to bash, bash recognizes this first ‘-’ in $0 and runs as a login shell, but zsh doesn't, although it seems that it should.

Is there a way to either make zsh recognize the ‘-’ in the arg[0], or make iTerm run the shell with a --login command line argument?

Answer 1

Have you tried editing the shell entry in account settings.

Go to the Accounts preferences, unlock, and right-click on your user account for the Advanced Settings dialog. Your shell should be /bin/zsh, and you can edit that invocation appropriately (i.e. add the --login argument).

Answer 2

chsh -s /bin/zsh

You'll be prompted for your password, but once you update your settings any new iTerm/Terminal sessions you start on that machine will default to zsh.

Answer 3

If you want to use oh-my-zsh, the installation for it will make zsh your login shell and start it in interactive mode.

Just follow the directions here.

Here's a snippet from the GitHub page:

1. Clone the repository

   git clone git://github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh.git ~/.oh-my-zsh

2. Create a new zsh config by copying the zsh template we've provided.

   NOTE: If you already have a ~/.zshrc file, you should back it up.

   cp ~/.zshrc ~/.zshrc.orig

   (in case you want to go back to your original settings.)

   cp ~/.oh-my-zsh/templates/zshrc.zsh-template ~/.zshrc

3. Set zsh as your default shell:

   chsh -s /bin/zsh

4. Start / restart zsh (open a new terminal is easy enough...)