When logging into the new VCSA 6.0 via SSH, you will notice that you are no longer dropped into a normal bash shell but into a new appliancesh (pronounced appliance shell) environment. This new interface provides basic set of virtual appliance management capabilities including Ruby vSphere Console (RVC) access which makes the majority of operations convenient to a vSphere Administrator but it also helps restrict unnecessary access to the underlying filesystem which can be helpful from a security standpoint.
If you need to access the underlying filesystem, you can temporarily enable it by running the following two commands:
shell.set --enabled True
shell
If you need to transfer files to/from the VCSA via SCP/WinSCP, you will need to change the default shell from /bin/appliancesh to /bin/bash else the operation will fail. You can easily do this by using the chsh command:
chsh -s "/bin/bash" root
If you rather have the BASH shell configured as the default after deployment and not have to go through this manual process each time, you can actually configured using the following hidden option called guestinfo.cis.appliance.root.shell
This property allows you to specify the default shell for the "root" account and you can only modify this if you deploy the VCSA using ovftool. Here is the parameter you would append to the ovftool argument list:
--prop:guestinfo.cis.appliance.root.shell="/bin/bash"
You can leverage this new property and automate the deployment of the new VCSA 6.0 and for more details be sure to check out my VCSA 6.0 Automation Series.
