GNOME 3.14+ – Launch New Gnome-Terminal and Set Title

aliasbashgnome-terminal

To the disappointment of many, tab/window title can't be set anymore with --title

I use bash. I have had a few aliases I have used to connect to remote servers with.

alias c:prod='gnome-terminal --hide-menubar --profile=Production \
--title="Production Server" -e "ssh <url>" &'

I found a workaround for GNOME 3.14+ to set title which works well in the command line once put in .bashrc

function set-title() {
  if [[ -z "$ORIG" ]]; then
    ORIG=$PS1
  fi
  TITLE="\[\e]2;$@\a\]"
  PS1=${ORIG}${TITLE}
}

However, this only seems to be effective if placed and called in the remote server's .bashrc i.e. I can only change the title after login.

It has no effect, whatsoever if I attempt to change the title of the new window before connecting:

alias c:prod='gnome-terminal --hide-menubar --profile=Production \
-e "bash -c \"source ~/.bashrc;set-title Production;ssh <url>\"" &'

Setting window title on the remote feels wrong, when the terminal is running on my box, and I cannot make it work on servers either where my user does not happen to have a home directory to put a .bashrc in.

Is there a forest I can't see for the trees?

Best Answer

Append set-title function to ~/.bashrc:

function set-title() {
  if [[ -z "$ORIG" ]]; then
    ORIG=$PS1
  fi
  TITLE="\[\e]2;$@\a\]"
  PS1=${ORIG}${TITLE}
}

Install expect, if you don't have it:
```
sudo apt-get install expect
```

Create ProductionServer.sh with content:

#!/usr/bin/env expect

spawn bash
expect -re $ {send -- "set-title \"Production Server\"\rclear\rssh user@1.2.3.4\rclear\r"}
interact
exit

Exec gnome-terminal with arguments:

gnome-terminal --hide-menubar -e ~/ProductionServer.sh

Maybe that process can be optimized, but problem already solved.

Related Solutions

Gnome Terminal – How to Set Title to ‘User@Host’

Yes. Here's an example for bash using PS1 that should be distro-agnostic:

Specifically, the escape sequence \[\e]0; __SOME_STUFF_HERE__ \a\] is of interest. I've edited this to be set in a separate variable for more clarity.

# uncomment for a colored prompt, if the terminal has the capability; 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
force_color_prompt=yes

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

TITLEBAR='\[\e]0;\u@\h\a\]'
# Same thing.. but with octal ASCII escape chars
#TITLEBAR='\[\033]2;\u@\h\007\]'

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
    PS1="${TITLEBAR}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\W\[\033[00m\]\$ "
else
    PS1="${TITLEBAR}\u@\h:\W\$ "
fi
unset color_prompt force_color_prompt

Also note that there can be many ways of setting an xterm's title, depending on which terminal program you are using, and which shell. For example, if you're using KDE's Konsole, you can override the title setting by going to Settings->Configure Profiles->Edit Profile->Tabs and setting the Tab title format and Remote tab title format settings.

Konsole titlebar settings dialog

Additionally, you may want to check out:

this "How to change the title of an xterm" FAQ for other shells
this "Prompt Magic" tip for a good reference of the escape sequences that work in bash.
this Bash Prompt HOWTO for a reference on ANSI Color escape sequences.

Ssh – How to automatically change terminal background, based on ssh hostname

You can use the ssh LocalCommand to emit the ANSI escape sequence to change background color, and have a section per host (or host pattern) to select the appropriate color you want to correspond to the remote host.

If your production servers follow a naming convention like "starts with prod", you can try the following snippet in your ~/.ssh/config file: Host prod* PermitLocalCommand yes LocalCommand printf "\x1b[41m\x1b[2JPRODUCTION SYSTEM [%n]\n\n"

If there isn't a handy naming convention to make use of wildcard patterns, you could just list the hostnames separated by spaces. You can create additional Host blocks with different color values and strings for various other non-production servers as well.

After connecting to a host that matches the pattern, the corresponding printf will be executed locally, changing the background color to red (the [41m chooses red as the background color, the [2J part repaints the entire screen with the updated background color. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ANSI_escape_code for lots more options)

The biggest nuisance about this approach is that the background color persists on exit from the ssh session; There is no counterpart to LocalCommand to be run on disconnect (that I am aware of). An alias or shell wrapper script for ssh could invoke printf "\x1b[0m" as a reset. On the other hand, having the background color set via LocalCommand means that you will get the color set even if ssh is not run via a wrapper script or alias.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Gnome Terminal – How to Set Title to ‘User@Host’

Ssh – How to automatically change terminal background, based on ssh hostname

Related Question