Install Configure IBM i - BASH

IBM i Open Source Technologies

Install BASH

The default shell on the IBM i is the Bourne shell (see: IBM PASE for i shells and utilities V7R4). The BOB team recommends changing this to the Bash shell because Bash is more user-friendly and feature-rich.

Open Source Bash, also known as PASE (Portable Application Solutions Environment) Bash, is a version of the Bash shell that is available on the IBM i operating system.

Bash is a popular Unix shell that is widely used on Linux and other Unix-like systems. The Open Source Bash on IBM i is a port of the Bash shell that allows users to run Bash scripts and commands on the IBM i platform.

The Open Source Bash on IBM i provides a number of benefits, including:

You can install BASH from the ACS Opensource tool:

Once BASH is installed, we need to set it up. We are going to create 2 files in our IFS home/username folder called .bash_profile and .bashrc  These configuration files used by the Bash shell to set up the environment and execute commands when the shell starts.

In general, if you want to set up something that should be run only once, when the user logs in, you should put it in .bash_profile. If you want to set up something that should be run every time a new shell is started, you should put it in .bashrc.

Configure the .bash_profile and .bashrc files

It is important that the directory /QOpenSys/pkgs/bin directory is added to our path so that the components of VSCode for IBM i can find and use the opensource packages we have just installed. Think of this as your *LIBL in the PASE world.

You can add the following lines to the $HOME/.bash_profile and your .bashrc file (or create it if it does not exist).

Note, in my example I have also added /QOpenSys/pkgs/lib/nodejs20/bin to my default path - if you have NodeJS20 installed then feel free to do the same. If not, then don't. I don't care 😉

Finally, we need to make BASH to default shell on our IBM i System

Set default shell to Bash

The bash shell can, and should, be set as your default shell for SSH sessions. SSH connections are often recommended for open-source tools. This setting will not impact the shell used in non-SSH environments, such as CALL QP2TERM or STRQSH.

From a shell, use the chsh command to set your shell

You can do this very easily from the command line in a 5250 session:

Alternatively - you can set this using SQL:

You can set bash to be your default shell by running the following command from anywhere you have an SQL context, such as the Run SQL Scripts tool:

You can also set bash to be the default shell for all users, by running:

Or, for a specific user:

Take a sip of your cup of tea, and let's do some fine tuning..