Customizing Your Prompt

I recently set up a home server as a small project to keep me sane during the COVID-19 social distancing period. I have been slowly customizing it to my liking to have a fully functional server that I can host files on and to learn a thing or two about Linux Sys Admin tasks.

One of the first things I do on any new server is to customize my prompt. Having a familiar prompt with the colors I like usually puts me in a good mood and makes things feel familiar across all the servers I use. It gives a new server a more “homey” feel.

The prompt format is controlled by a variable PS1. By changing the value of PS1 (for “Prompt String 1”), you can change your prompt format and color. Here are some values that might be helpful:

Selected values used in Shell prompt:

Selected colors used in Shell prompt:

I usually like to know the user I am under (\u), the server I am using (\h) and the folder I am in (\W). So my $PS1 looks like:

export PS1=\[\033[0;36m\]\u\[\033[1;37m\]@\[\033[0;32m\]\h:\[\033[1;33m\]\W\[\033[1;37m\]$

Here is the breakdown:

To edit yours, you can customize your PS1 string and then save your edited PS1 command in your .bashrc file. As an example:

nano ~/.bashrc

## paste your PS1
export PS1=\[\033[0;36m\]\u\[\033[1;37m\]@\[\033[0;32m\]\h:\[\033[1;33m\]\W\[\033[1;37m\]$

## Save and exit. You will need to source bashrc or open a new terminal to see the changes.

Here is what mine looks like:

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