How to set SHELL=/bin/bash globally for cron

Question

With BASH_ENV assigned in /etc/environment I noticed that it doesn't affect cron jobs.

I figured out that having SHELL=/bin/bash in a users' crontab does the trick! Yes! If I simply add (to the crontab):

SHELL=/bin/bash

... it works. I can go in as root and do a simple:

sed -i 1iSHELL=/bin/bash /var/spool/cron/*

However, I'd like to have this setting global (or the default).

Is it possible to set default cron SHELL as bash?

I've already tried the following, none of which did the trick:

• Adding the line in /etc/crontab effects only the /etc/crontab itself not all users
• Adding to /etc/sysconfig/crond and restart the cron
• Adding to /etc/environment and cron restart
• Added session required pam_env.so readenv=1 to /etc/pam.d/crond and restart cron
• Added line to /etc/default/cron and another restart

How to set default cron SHELL as bash?

Answer 1

There is no way to set a global default shell for cron jobs.

Answer 2

An alternative is that if you are running shell scripts from crontab, then you can put this at the top of the script.

#!/bin/bash -l

This will make it act like a login shell.