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Tummala Dhanvi
Asked: 2014-09-09 02:41:27 +0800 CST

oh my zsh for the root and for all user

  • 772

I have installed zsh and I am using Oh My ZSH plugins. Everything works fine, but when I become a root user, it changes to the default zsh theme.

What should I do to make the Oh My ZSH configuration as the default zsh for all users including root?

I have tried using the chsh -s /bin/zsh root

That gave me zsh but not oh_my_zsh

I also tried cp -R /home/user/.zshrc /root/.zshrcing to get oh_my_zsh for root, but nothing worked.

(I don't need zsh but I need oh_my_zsh for all the user in the system)

zsh

8 Answers

  1. I made symbolic links to my zsh files in my home dir, that seems to work fine: 

    ln -s $HOME/.oh-my-zsh           /root/.oh-my-zsh
ln -s $HOME/.zshrc               /root/.zshrc

    Disclaimer (Updated 2020-3-9): Only do this on a single user machine as it will make a user able to run programs as root (see comment by Eliah Kagan).

    • 32
  2. Best Answer

    Just run the install command as root user (after doing sudo su)

    sh -c "$(wget https://raw.github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh -O -)"
    • 11

  3. For anyone else with the same question, I would recommend a combination of Tummala Dhanvi's and Morton's approach. I installed oh-my-zsh both as root and as the user using the following commands:

    User:

    sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

    Root:

    su
sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.github.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

    Then I created a symbolic link for the config file (run as user):

    sudo ln -s /root/.zshrc $HOME/.zshrc

    Make sure the user has permissions to read the file:

    sudo chmod 744 /root/.zshrc

    This approach allows for a shared config while keeping the system secure. You will, however, need root privileges to edit .zshrc

    • 9

  4. First install zsh or some shell with say oh-my-zsh as a normal user.

    If you have normally setup the zsh shell & oh-my-zhs framework, then don't just sudo su into root & type chsh -s $(which zsh) $(whoami) to change shell & framework

    First create system links in root of your home shell & framework configs;

    • ln -s $HOME/.zshrc /root/.zshrc
    • ln -s $HOME/.oh-my-zsh /root/.oh-my-zsh

    Then after that go on and change the shell chsh -s $(which zsh) $(whoami)

    BUT if you already changed the shell before making the system links then you will get a return of probably /root/.zshrc or so file already exists.

    There you have to navigate to the source /root & delete whatever existing file they said & then do the system link command required to create it again but sourced from home.

    After that you will have a root with the same shell & framework like you have in your normal user's terminal

    if you have already done all these & it doesn't work because of permission issues, then just grant the permission to these root files;

    • sudo chmod 744 /root/.zshrc
    • 2

  5. I installed oh-my-zsh with root account. Now I login with another account, and install oh-my-zsh again in the home directory of the account. It works for the non-root account.

    • 1

  6. I wrote a short script based on Lord Lulent solution, which works well for me

    USER=barman
USER_HOME_PATH=~$USER
sudo ln -s $HOME/.zshrc   ${USER_HOME_PATH}/.zshrc
sudo ln -s $HOME/.oh-my-zsh   ${USER_HOME_PATH}/.oh-my-zsh
sudo ln -s $HOME/.p10k.zsh   ${USER_HOME_PATH}/.p10k.zsh
sudo chsh -s $(which zsh)  $USER
    • 0

  7. This might help with this use case https://stackoverflow.com/a/42193058/1408600

    You could just install for the intended user using:

    1. wget https://raw.github.com/robbyrussell/oh-my-zsh/master/tools/install.sh
    2. su $USER ./install.sh
    • 0

  8. Yes, it is possible to install OhMyZsh for different users.

    If it is ok for you to have completely separated settings, you can provide different ZSH paths for each install, like this:

    ZSH="$HOME/.oh-my-zsh" sh -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ohmyzsh/ohmyzsh/master/tools/install.sh)"

    Cheers!

    • 0