What is the difference between Login and Non-Login Shell?

[Legacy User]

On AE, if you are executing a Linux/UNIX job, you need to specify which shell you want to use. On UNIX tab, you can choose a shell either with Login or Non-Login shell.

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The Login shell has "-" before the shell(ex. -bash) and the Non-Login shell does not have "-". The difference is that with login shell, you load the profile of the submission user whereas the non-login shell it will load the default environment. By default, the Shell parameter is empty so it will use the non-login shell.

[Legacy User]

This can be very important to note when seeing differences in environmental behavior. 

For example, if dev and uat are configured differently for the location of Oracle, movement between the two can cause headaches in troubleshooting if they are using a default shell and environmental changes are done on the user level. 

[Vlad Navazhylau]

Just want to add that it will be good if Automic developed “Action Packs” standardize on the way this option is defined on Unix Jobs within provided “Action Packs”.

With ARA 5 and AE 10 we’ve seen that some Unix Jobs on Action Packs will have the Shell set for “-bash” but some will leave it default blank.

The issue then comes in when the Action Pack is relying, for example, on some Java libraries with specific version of JDK or ARATools.jar functions and since proper version of JAVA_HOME on a system maybe defined at user “.bash_profile” file the Action Pack then will miss the proper version of Java since it will use Non-Login shell and fail until the updates to Unix Job is made.

I don’t have list of all the Unix Jobs in Action Packs that may have these issues.