[CentOS] Setting PS1 for ordinary users

[Mike Burger]

-- 
Mike Burger
http://www.bubbanfriends.org

"It's always suicide-mission this, save-the-planet that. No one ever just
stops by to say 'hi' anymore." --Colonel Jack O'Neill, SG1


> On Wed, Oct 10, 2012 at 03:48:23PM -0400, James B. Byrne wrote:
>> To clarify the situation.  The ONLY difference in the shell setup for
>> both root and an ordinary user is the name.  As shown below they bith
>> use the same shell, they both have exactly the same contents in
>> .bashrc and .bash_profile.  The file .profile exists for neither.  And
>> yet somehow they end up with totally different PS1 values.
>>
>> How this happens I wish to discover.  Where is root getting its PS1
>> value set and why is root's prompt surrounded by []?  The ordinary
>> user's PS1 value is that of the bash default which indicates to me
>> that it is not being set anywhere.
>>
>> There is a good deal of code given over to setting the PS1 value in
>> /etc/bashrc but it seems to depend upon PS1 being already set.  I can
>> find no reference to PS1 in any file in/root and the oly reference in
>> /etc/profile.d is in colorls.sh which seems to be testing PS1 for a
>> zero length string (i.e unset value).
>>
>> Where is PS1 actually being set?
>
> James,
>
> Have a look in /etc/bashrc  (and scripts called from there, such
> as in /etc/profile.d).
>
> HTH,

To be more specific, look at the root user's .bashrc and the regular
user's .bashrc, and note whether or not they contain:

# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
        . /etc/bashrc
fi

On my system(s), /etc/bashrc contains the specifics for setting $PS1. If
your system's /etc/bashrc contains the same, and the regular users'
.bashrc files are not calling /etc/bashrc, this may explain the lack of
"appropriate" prompt display.