Nothing to see here, moving along…

Here’s my original ’slide’ shown at NYCBUG’s December 2009 meeting.

But, here’s my full tricked out ~/.screenrc values:


escape ^tt

hardstatus on
hardstatus alwayslastline "%{Wb}%?%-Lw%?%{Cb}%n*%f %t%?(%u)%?%{Wb}%?%+Lw%= %{Wb}@ %H %{kb}| %{Cb}%Y%{kb}_%{Cb}%m%{kb}_%{Cb}%d%{kb}_%{Cb}%D %{kb}| %{Wb}%c"

To help make sense of the hardstatus colors the following %{Cb} is ‘bright cyan‘ on a ‘black‘ background.

Ok, ok: here’s the most important part of your ~/.screenrc file: the escape directive.

ALL of my root logins have the following “escape ^^” value: vv.

Sure, you can’t ^v to paste into a shell, if your shell and desktop allow that, but *meh*, who cares? I’ve replaced that with X11’s middle click and Putty’s right click.

So, what about the rest of my user logins? I don’t exclusively login as root and I also use the Dvorak keyboard layout. With that in mind, what has worked out for me is to use, as the, what I’ll call, ‘the main login‘; which is my main user on the main host I login into – and that I would establish the root-nested-screen session at and with. (Hope that makes sense.).

With that user, I use this directive: escape ^tt.

With other, non-root, users, I use escape ^^g.

*taking a breath*

Ok, if you’re an avid *Nix user, you might have noticed how my last directive kills one particular function in both vi and vim: ^g. But, I’ve learned to live without knowing which file I’m currently editing in vi/m. No biggie.

Now, BEHOLD here are my super-select (if not secret, even!) PS1 variables and color codings:

$ echo $PS1
\[\e[00;34m\]________________________________________________________________________________\n\[\e[01;34m\](\j) \[\e[01;33m\]\h \[\e[00;31m\]<\t> \[\e[01;34m\]\w \n$ \[\e[00m\]


What? What do you mean I haven’t really shown anything really new…. You’re right. Let me redeem myself:

DIVIDER=${BLUE}
JOBCOUNTER=${PURPLE}
HOSTCOLOR=${YELLOW}
TIMECOLOR=${RED}
PATHCOLOR=${PURPLE}
OUTPUTCOLOR=${NOCOLOR}
PS2COLOR=${RED}

# Standard 'root' PS1 variable:
export PS1="\[${DIVIDER}\]________________________________________________________________________________\n\[${JOBCOUNTER}\](\j) \[${HOSTCOLOR}\]\h \[${TIMECOLOR}\]<\t> \[${PATHCOLOR}\]\w \n\$ \[${OUTPUTCOLOR}\]"
export PS2="\[${PS2COLOR}\]-> \[${OUTPUTCOLOR}\]"


*blush* I’ve forgotten how specialized I’d tricked out my $PS1 variable…. at least there’s some indications of what I’m trying to accomplish.

But, what if you don’t want to build your command prompt as I do?

Here are the color code hook-ups. You can use them in your ~/.bashrc file if you wish:

# My PS color variables:
BLACK='\e[00;30m'
BLACKISH='\e[01;30m'
RED='\e[00;31m'
ORANGE='\e[01;31m'
GREEN='\e[00;32m'
LIGHTGREEN='\e[01;32m'
BROWN='\e[00;33m'
YELLOW='\e[01;33m'
BLUE='\e[00;34m'
PURPLE='\e[01;34m'
MAGENTA='\e[00;35m'
PINK='\e[01;35m'
DARKCYAN='\e[00;36m'
CYAN='\e[01;36m'
GREY='\e[00;37m'
WHITE='\e[01;37m'
B_BLACK='\e[00;40m'
B_BLACKER='\e[01;40m'
B_RED='\e[00;41m'
B_ORANGE='\e[01;41m'
B_GREEN='\e[00;42m'
B_LIGHTGREEN='\e[01;42m'
B_BROWN='\e[00;44m'
B_YELLOW='\e[01;44m'
B_BLUE='\e[00;44m'
B_PURPLE='\e[01;44m'
B_MAGENTA='\e[00;45m'
B_PINK='\e[01;45m'
B_DARKCYAN='\e[00;46m'
B_CYAN='\e[01;46m'
B_GREY='\e[00;47m'
B_WHITE='\e[01;47m'
NOCOLOR='\e[00m'


ROCK ON!Now you, too, can use variables to specify PS1 colors as you like.

Man, I hope you enjoyed this.

Later,
bt

P.S. Coming later: If you want to have certain sessions start up automatically with a new screen session, there are some directives you can set up in your ~/.screenrc.