On 170923-19:01+1000, Erik Christiansen wrote:
> On 23.09.17 10:15, Arnt Karlsen wrote:
> > ..I still miss and prefer the S.u.S.E.-5.2 way, root had a
> > nice red background color in xterms, fairly hard to miss.
>
> If the '#' and "root@hostname" escape the attention of a person
> entrusted with root privileges, then why not make the root prompt bright red:
>
> root@ratatosk:/home/erik# export PS1="\[\033[1;31m\]\u@\h:\W\$ \[\033[0;0m\]"

Useful. But in which file do you stick it, you didn't say? ~/.bashrc ?

> OK, that reverted the '#' to '$', presumably because I'd su-ed, rather
> than logged in as root. (\$ => '#' for uid==0, else '$')
>
> As all my xterms are yellow on darkslategrey, one bright red prompt
> cannot be missed, even from the other side of the room.

However, the issue is somebody, origianally in Debian of course, decided colors
were distractful for users, and the default is no color in the prompt.

Find this wrong notion engraved, (lets put it mildly), in the comment at line
45 of:

/etc/skel/.bashrc

and it reads (the subject of the sentece added by me):
[color] turned
# off by default to not distract the user: the focus in a terminal window
# should be on the output of commands, not on the prompt

It isn't so in my system, because I detected that and changed it. And root is
still not color'ed, but normal user is now green, which is enough for me to
know which terminal windows in my X are root. Simply: "root@gdOv:/home/mr#"
without color, is not enough. But when user "mr@gdOv:~$" is in color green,
which happens because I uncommented where it reads (now the first part of that
comment, along with the overlapping part) in the /etc/skel/.bashrc:

# uncomment for a colored prompt, if the terminal has the capability; turned
# off by default to not distract the user:

...So, when the user "mr@gdOv:~$" is in color green, I can't anymore miss where
I'm root instead.

I think in most of people's boxen the default is set, i.e. no color prompt,
which has these lines from /etc/skel/.bashrc commented out (but I don't
remember with certainty, and also read on if it's another change that does it
in fact):

if [ -n "$force_color_prompt" ]; then
    if [ -x /usr/bin/tput ] && tput setaf 1 >&/dev/null; then
        # We have color support; assume it's compliant with Ecma-48
        # (ISO/IEC-6429). (Lack of such support is extremely rare, and such
        # a case would tend to support setf rather than setaf.)
        color_prompt=yes
    else
        color_prompt=
    fi
fi

And they read like the above in mine /etc/skel/.bashrc .

Attaching the /etc/skel/.bashrc as _bashrc.gz . It likely won't get to the
Lurker archives, attachments are not allowed in, other than text attachments,
but it will be available in the www.mail-archives.com, right after the message
to which I'm replying:
Re: [DNG] New behaviour under Devuan.
https://www.mail-archive.com/dng@lists.dyne.org/msg17863.html

if I'm not mistaken.

Interested reader can compare my /etc/skel/.bashrc if they have missing color
in their terminals in Xorg (open the attachment where available)):

_bashrc.gz

However, it might be another bit of code, thanks to which I have color'ed
terminal prompt as regular user... Looking up this diff:

mr@gdOv:~$ diff /etc/skel/.bashrc .bashrc 
40c40
<     xterm-color|*-256color) color_prompt=yes;;
---

>     xterm-color) color_prompt=yes;;

46c46
< #force_color_prompt=yes
---
> force_color_prompt=yes
113a114,124
[...]

it appears that I set:
force_color_prompt=yes
in my ~/.bashrc . And that actually gives me color'ed mr@gdOv:~$ (I'm not an
expert as I often admit.)

Regards!

--
Miroslav Rovis
Zagreb, Croatia
https://www.CroatiaFidelis.hr