<HTML ><HEAD ><TITLE >Setting the PS? Strings Permanently</TITLE ><META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="Modular DocBook HTML Stylesheet Version 1.7"><LINK REL="HOME" TITLE="Bash Prompt HOWTO" HREF="index.html"><LINK REL="UP" TITLE="Bash and Bash Prompts" HREF="c141.html"><LINK REL="PREVIOUS" TITLE="Bash Prompt Escape Sequences" HREF="bash-prompt-escape-sequences.html"><LINK REL="NEXT" TITLE="Bash Programming and Shell Scripts" HREF="c189.html"></HEAD ><BODY CLASS="SECT1" BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000" LINK="#0000FF" VLINK="#840084" ALINK="#0000FF" ><DIV CLASS="NAVHEADER" ><TABLE SUMMARY="Header navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TH COLSPAN="3" ALIGN="center" >Bash Prompt HOWTO: </TH ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="bash-prompt-escape-sequences.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="80%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="bottom" >Chapter 2. Bash and Bash Prompts</TD ><TD WIDTH="10%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="bottom" ><A HREF="c189.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ></TABLE ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"></DIV ><DIV CLASS="SECT1" ><H1 CLASS="SECT1" ><A NAME="SETPS" ></A >2.6. Setting the PS? Strings Permanently</H1 ><P >Various people and distributions set their PS? strings in different places. The most common places are /etc/profile, /etc/bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, and ~/.bashrc . Johan Kullstam (johan19 at idt dot net) writes: </P ><A NAME="AEN183" ></A ><BLOCKQUOTE CLASS="BLOCKQUOTE" ><P >the PS1 string should be set in .bashrc. this is because non-interactive bashes go out of their way to unset PS1. the bash man page tells how the presence or absence of PS1 is a good way of knowing whether one is in an interactive vs non-interactive (ie script) bash session.</P ><P >the way i realized this is that startx is a bash script. what this means is, startx will wipe out your prompt. when you set PS1 in .profile (or .bash_profile), login at console, fire up X via startx, your PS1 gets nuked in the process leaving you with the default prompt.</P ><P >one workaround is to launch xterms and rxvts with the -ls option to force them to read .profile. but any time a shell is called via a non-interactive shell-script middleman PS1 is lost. system(3) uses sh -c which if sh is bash will kill PS1. a better way is to place the PS1 definition in .bashrc. this is read every time bash starts and is where interactive things - eg PS1 should go.</P ><P >therefore it should be stressed that PS1=..blah.. should be in .bashrc and not .profile.</P ></BLOCKQUOTE ><P >I tried to duplicate the problem he explains, and encountered a different one: my PROMPT_COMMAND variable (which will be introduced later) was blown away. My knowledge in this area is somewhat shaky, so I'm going to go with what Johan says.</P ></DIV ><DIV CLASS="NAVFOOTER" ><HR ALIGN="LEFT" WIDTH="100%"><TABLE SUMMARY="Footer navigation table" WIDTH="100%" BORDER="0" CELLPADDING="0" CELLSPACING="0" ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="bash-prompt-escape-sequences.html" ACCESSKEY="P" >Prev</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="index.html" ACCESSKEY="H" >Home</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="c189.html" ACCESSKEY="N" >Next</A ></TD ></TR ><TR ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="left" VALIGN="top" >Bash Prompt Escape Sequences</TD ><TD WIDTH="34%" ALIGN="center" VALIGN="top" ><A HREF="c141.html" ACCESSKEY="U" >Up</A ></TD ><TD WIDTH="33%" ALIGN="right" VALIGN="top" >Bash Programming and Shell Scripts</TD ></TR ></TABLE ></DIV ></BODY ></HTML >
