Bash – Why when I ssh into one server it shows bash and the other have the username

bashcommand linerhel

So at work I have two web servers that I am able to ssh into.

Both are RHEL 6.5

When I log into one, it shows this:

[username@ldvweb01 /]$

When I log into the other one it shows:

-bash-4.1$

I find it way more elegant when it shows the first one. How do I switch between the two? Can someone explain this to me?

After running this echo $PS1 these are the results

-bash-4.1$ echo $PS1
\s-\v\$

and

[appadmin@ldvcatweb01 /]$ echo $PS1
[\u@\h \W]\$

After checking for the differences between both home directories. I found that there was no .bashrc or .bash_profile in the home directory.

So I copied the ones from the previous server.

# .bash_profile

# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
        . ~/.bashrc
fi

# User specific environment and startup programs

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin

export PATH

and

# .bashrc

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

# User specific aliases and functions

I am guess that it just pulls the default bash settings from /etc

Thanks for all your help.

Best Answer

The bash prompt is configured by the PS1 environment variable. You can get the prompt you desire by adding 

export PS1="[\u@\h \W]\$ "

to your .bashrc file (located in your user's home directory).

The full list of special characters that you can use for your prompt can be found in the official Bash documentation.

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