I have two questions..

Question one (easier to answer, I think):
When I edit my .bashrc file to change PS1 (bash prompt), it only changes it in gnome terminal, not in the virtual terminals (tty1,tty2, not sure the official name for them).

Why is this, and how could I make the prompt change there too?

Question two:


Is it possible to format the output in bash?

For example:

Typical Bash Output:
$ ls
Blah Blah Blah
Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah Blah
Blah Blah Blah

Formatted Bash Output:
ls
# Weee!
# Wooo!
#

or
[12:33] $ Command
[12:34] Standard output goes here!
[12:35] Woo!

As you can see, I'm inserting stuff before every output line. It might make copying output with copy/paste annoying, but sometimes I wish I could get the text a little farther away from the left side for easier reading. I'm just curious as to whether it's possible.

Hi.
I'm not sure about formatting the output but you can make the bashfile display some text before or after the command.
F.ex.
echo "This is describing text for the command"

When I googled format output of bash I got this among others...
http://linux.derkeiler.com/Mailing-L...4-11/0483.html
http://www.unix.com/shell-programmin...ng-output.html
http://www.faqs.org/docs/bashman/bashref_122.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=499626

Hope this will help... ...and... ...Google is your friend....

I'll take a quick stab at the first question;

You're using a terminal emulator (konsole, xterm, eterm, whatever) that isn't launching bash with the "-l" (ell) option.

A quick work around;
1. Check your home directory for a .bash_profile file.
2. If it doesn't exist, link .bashrc to .bash_profile
3. if it does exist, run the following command and go over the entire output.
man bash

As for the 2nd Question, me thinks you need a quick-n-dirty introduction to the black arts of "Shell Scripting".

Have fun!

Please don't. .bashrc and .bash_profile have a different meaning: see 'man bash', the "INVOCATION" part.

unSpawn,
Normally I wouldn't suggest symlinking the two, but as long as neither .bashrc nor .bash_profile echo messages out to the terminal (and they usually don't by default), Rob00's fine. I know one is for non-interactive login and the other for interactive login, but the short of the long is;

His session manager (xterm, eterm, konsole, whatever) is not starting bash properly, but rather than get into the dynamics of that, linking the two is fine.

Heck, the compile options for bash can be tweaked to change the default behavior.

Typically I would suggest putting the following at the bottom of the .bashrc file;

Cue the Quick-n-Dirty Intro to Shell Scripting black arts as previously mentioned....
But I'm taking the "safe" route and suggesting the ln command rather than vi (or...emacs).

Bash startup files are explained here. They divide into "login/not login" and "interactive/not interactive". ~/.bashrc is for interactive shells that are not login shells. When you log in at virtual terminal it's a login shell so ~/.bashrc is not used; instead bash uses /etc/profile and the first of ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login and ~/.profile that is available.

A common way to apply the same customisation to login shells as is applied to non-login interactive shells is to add this line to /etc/profile or whichever of ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login or ~/.profile is usedI favour ~/.bash_login because it is per-user rather than system-wide and the name reminds when it is used.

there's might be a dirty way to do that in the virtual console. you can hack the vc manager (whatever it is) in the kernel to always insert a custom string on every line.