shell help

alexes · 05-16-2004, 01:08 PM

hello everybody,
whenever I read something about using the shell the prompt shows a $ sign.
I don't have that.mine looks like this: "my login name"@linux:~>
I just don't know where to look for help about this. I have Linux,The Complete Reference,Running Linux by O'Reilly & my SUSE user guide for books.
any help would be great!
thanks,
alex

david_ross · 05-16-2004, 01:12 PM

Welcome to LQ.

It doesn't really matter what your shell looks like. If you want it to look like that then run:
PS1=$

Perhaps you are trying to run a command that requires you to be root, try suing with "su -" first.

alexes · 05-16-2004, 02:18 PM

thank you for that information. am I right in thinking that thats just a default login prompt?.Is the host name simply a name I give my computer?
root is o.k. it gives me the # symbol. just a little disconcerting when I didn't get the same $ symbol as shown in the books.

david_ross · 05-17-2004, 01:24 PM

yes it is just the default and you can set your hostname to whatever you like but make sure you add your new hostname after the loopback address in /etc/hosts