question about bash look and feel
 

I have suse 9.2 pro. My problem is with the bash shell. I have been using Redhat/Fedora for a few years. Over that time I have gotten used to thethe following look in the terminal

[paul@hockeyfan Documents]$

In my suse distribution the command prompt looks more like the windows command prompt. Is there any way I can make the comand prompt look like the above format rather then the windows format?

According to yast I am running a bash shell, /bin/bash to be exact


Hockeyfan

Your personal enviroment in SuSE is controlled by either the .profile or the .bashrc file in your home directory.

simply change the prompt there.

example in .profile

PS1="$USER@$HOSTNAME"

I use this prompt:

PS1="
`whoami`@`hostname`
cmd-> "

Then in the same file export the variable
export PS1

=================

Right now, your prompt is set for every user in the
/etc/profile or possibly the /etc/bash.bashrc file

You can change it there as well.

The .profile is read only once when you first log in. The .bashrc is read everytime you open a new shell (bash)

Look at the bash prompt HOWTO and the "Prompting" section of the bash man page for all sorts of options.

For what you posted, try typing this at a bash prompt (this is just temporary):

PS1="[\u@\h \W]$ "

If you like it, put the following at the end of your ~/.bashrc:

# Fedora-like bash prompt
PS1="[\u@\h \W]$ "

Then become root, and put the following at the end of your ~/.bashrc (you may need to create it):

# Fedora-like bash prompt
PS1="[\u@\h \W]# "

If you want to go back to the default, just comment those lines out of ~/.bashrc or delete them (for your normal user and for root).

(Now why the "/$" escape sequence isn't working, I don't know, but it didn't work for me.)

(Now why the "/$" escape sequence isn't working, I don't know, but it didn't work for me.)


I didn't see that in the code above.... But anyway, it would be a \ (backslash)

Example:

PS1="`whoami`@`hostname`:\$PWD"

Which would constantly update when you changed directories. Without the bachslash \$PWD The prompt would always show the same directory.

Oops, that's what I meant, "\$" not "/$", sorry. It's supposed to display a "#" when you're root (UID=0) and a "$" for any other user.