Open Your First Shell Session on RHEL

In this tutorial, you will open an interactive Bash shell three different ways: through a terminal emulator, by inspecting virtual console devices, and through an SSH loopback connection. Along the way, you will read the prompt to confirm who you are, where you are, and which shell is running.

These are foundational skills for the RHCSA EX200 exam. Every other exam task assumes you can open a reliable shell session and orient yourself within it.

What You Will Build

By the end of this tutorial, you will have:

• Read a Bash prompt and understood every component of it
• Confirmed your active shell, username, and working directory from the command line
• Identified the terminal device your session is using with tty
• Opened a second shell session over SSH and confirmed it uses a pseudo-terminal (pts)
• Closed sessions cleanly with exit

The final verification will look like this:

/bin/bash

That single line — the output of echo $SHELL — confirms that Bash is the active shell for your user account.

Step 1 — Read the Prompt

When you open your terminal on the playground, you already have a Bash shell session. Before running any commands, look at the prompt itself:

[laborant@rocky-01 ~]$

Every component carries meaning:

Step 2 — Confirm Your Username and Working Directory

Now confirm each piece of the prompt programmatically.

Print your current username:

echo $USER

You should see:

laborant

Print the full path of your current directory:

pwd

You should see:

/home/laborant

The ~ in the prompt is shorthand for /home/laborant. The prompt updates this dynamically as you change directories.

Step 3 — Confirm Which Shell Is Active

Now confirm which shell is running this session:

echo $SHELL

You should see:

/bin/bash

$SHELL holds the path of the default login shell assigned to your user account. This is stored in /etc/passwd and does not change between sessions unless an administrator modifies it.

Step 4 — Identify Your Terminal Device

Every shell session is attached to a terminal device. Run:

tty

You should see something like:

/dev/pts/0

This path identifies the pseudo-terminal (PTY) device your session is using. The pts prefix distinguishes a terminal-emulator or SSH session from a hardware virtual console.

Step 5 — Open a Shell Session Over SSH

Now open a second shell session using SSH. On a real RHEL system this would target a remote IP address. Here, we use loopback (localhost) to demonstrate the same concept within the playground.

ssh laborant@localhost

You will see a host key prompt on your first connection:

The authenticity of host 'localhost (127.0.0.1)' can't be established.
ED25519 key fingerprint is SHA256:xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx.
Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no/[fingerprint])?

Type yes and press Enter.

When prompted for a password, enter the laborant user password: laborant

You should arrive at a new prompt:

[laborant@rocky-01 ~]$

The prompt looks identical — but this is a new, independent shell session delivered over an encrypted SSH connection.

Step 6 — Confirm the SSH Session Identity

Now that you are inside the SSH session, run tty again:

tty

You should see something like:

/dev/pts/1

Notice the difference from Step 4:

The number after pts/ increments with each new pseudo-terminal allocated. Your SSH session received a fresh PTY, separate from the one your outer terminal is using.

Step 7 — Close the SSH Session and Verify Final Shell

Close the SSH session cleanly:

exit

You should see:

logout
Connection to localhost closed.

You are now back at your original terminal prompt. Confirm your shell one final time:

echo $SHELL

You should see:

/bin/bash

What You Accomplished

In this tutorial, you:

1. Read the Bash prompt and identified its four components: username, hostname, current directory, and privilege indicator
2. Confirmed your username with echo $USER and your working directory with pwd
3. Confirmed your default shell with echo $SHELL — the result was /bin/bash
4. Identified your terminal device with tty — a pts device for terminal-emulator and SSH sessions
5. Opened a second shell session over SSH using ssh laborant@localhost, accepted the host key, and authenticated
6. Confirmed the SSH session device — a new pts number, independent of the first session
7. Closed sessions cleanly with exit and confirmed the logout message

Key Commands Reference

Next Steps

Now that you can open and orient yourself in a Bash shell three different ways, continue with:

• Accessing a Shell Prompt on RHEL — quick procedures for opening terminal sessions in different scenarios, including sudo escalation
• Understanding the Linux Shell and Command Syntax — why the prompt looks the way it does, what $SHELL means, and how Bash fits into the Linux architecture
• Bash Command Syntax and Options — complete specification of command structure, shell variables, and quoting rules