Linux® Desk Reference, Second Edition

Commands

Invoking bash

Typically, the shells are invoked when you log in. The last thing the login program does is look in your /etc/passwd file to see what shell your system administrator has specified for you to use. If it isn't bash, you can either edit the /etc/passwd file, use the usermod command to change your login shell, or invoke bash from another shell by typing /bin/bash at the command line. The following options apply:

-norc	Don't read the “~/.bashrc” initialization file in an interactive shell.
-rcfile FILENAME	Execute commands from the specified file rather than ~/.bashrc in an interactive shell.
-noprofile	Don't load the system-wide startup file /etc/profile or any of the personal initialization files (~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, ...