change Ubuntu Server to use /bin/bash

Question

A Linode server has Ubuntu Server (16.04) so I added ubuntu-desktop and gnome-terminal. Accessing the server via VNC I can open a terminal and it uses /bin/sh which has no command line editing and is generally hard to use interactively.

Using chsh --shell /bin/bash has no effect.

Editing the terminal's Profile Preferences to enable "Run command as login shell" makes no difference.

A reboot makes no difference.

Logging in via ssh to the same server gives a bash command line. It is only the terminal inside the VNC session that uses sh.

How do I fix this or is this supposed to be fun?

Answer 1

In the terminal go to Preferences > Profiles and create a new one. In the Command tab select Run a custom command instead of my shell and set it to /bin/bash.

Select the new profile as the one to be the Profile used when launching a new terminal by clicking the drop-down list.

The pre-existing Unnamed profile can be deleted.