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Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,581  

ssh terminals and how to differentiate between them

Hello:

Those who are more savvy than I am in command line work and SSL'ing into other installations probably have been through this.

I am slowly learning to use ssh, which I find quite entertaining but more than once I've 'almost' goofed up and done something in the local terminal instead of the other terminal I had open to a Raspberry Pi also running Devuan ascii.

Is there a way to eg: when I open a ssh connection, have the terminal automatically show something that would differentiate it from a local one.
eg: the title bar or font colours.

I've looked at the terminal configuration settings but found nothing.

Thanks in advance,

A.

ralph.ronnquist

Administrator

From: Battery Point, Tasmania, AUS

Registered: 2016-11-30

Posts: 1,251  

Re: ssh terminals and how to differentiate between them

You can but the following line in all your ~/.zshrc (or ~/.bashrc perhaps)

function title() { echo -n "\033]0;$1\007"; }

and then use

$ title Bendigo

to change the terminal title. Endless possibilities....

Head_on_a_Stick

Member

From: London

Registered: 2019-03-24

Posts: 3,125  

Website

Re: ssh terminals and how to differentiate between them

Changing the prompt (PS1) is another option, for example: https://unix.stackexchange.com/question … st-via-ssh

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Brianna Ghey — Rest In Power

Altoid

Member

Registered: 2017-05-07

Posts: 1,581  

Re: ssh terminals and how to differentiate between them

Hello:

... the following line in all your ~/.zshrc (or ~/.bashrc perhaps)

function title() { echo -n "\033]0;$1\007"; }

and then use

$ title Bendigo

to change the terminal title.

Changing the prompt (PS1) is another option ...

Thanks to both. =-)
I'll have a look at how these wotk.

In the meanwhile I'll have to be extra carefull.

Cheers,

A.

chris2be8

Member

Registered: 2018-08-11

Posts: 307  

Re: ssh terminals and how to differentiate between them

I've got several systems I administer by ssh'ing from my main system so I had this problem too.

My main system sets the window title to match the prompt, eg to the following:

chris@rigel:~/bin

But most of the other systems don't set it. As a work around I created a directory named after each system on my main system, cd'ed  into it and ssh'ed from there onto the other system. So the window title says something like:

chris@rigel:~/vega

which tags the window as being the one ssh'ed onto vega. It's not ideal but it helps.

Also on all my systems the prompt says the hostname as well as the current directory. Train yourself to look at it before doing anything. You might be able to set the prompt to different colours on different systems (although I prefer green prompt most of the time, but red if I need to run as root).

Chris