How To Customise Linux Terminal Prompt

I’m using a very low powered laptop. When I fire up Docker containers, they can take a while. I’d like to know how long, but I didn’t check when I started it. If the terminal prompt had a timestamp then I wouldn’t need to.

It might be kinda useful info to have. Naturally, I’m going to spent multiple hours to finding and implementing the solution.

Here’s what I currently get:

<user>@<host>:<current directory>$

Here’s what I want:

[<YYYY-MM-DD-HH-MM-SS-TZ>]<user>@<host>:<full path>
$

How to change it in three simple steps:

1. Modify the PS1 environment variable in the .bashrc file found in your home directory. Use man bash (the PROMPTING section) or bashrcgenerator.com.
2. .bashrc already has a few lines involved in setting the PS1 var. Find out what $debian_chroot is, and why you why want to leave it in the terminal prompt. chrooted debian?
3. Take the time to learn about tput and add colour commands. tput?, 256 colours

Here’s what was in there already:

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '
else
    PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ '
fi

And here’s my first attempt at customisation:

BG_WHITE="$(tput setab 15)"
BG_BLACK="$(tput setab 0)"
FG_NAVY="$(tput setaf 4)"
FG_TEAL="$(tput setaf 6)"
FG_PURPLE="$(tput setaf 5)"
FG_RED="$(tput setaf 9)"
FG_BOLD="$(tput bold)"
DEFAULT_ATTRS="$(tput sgr0)"

if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then
    PS1="${debian_chroot:+${BG_BLACK}${FG_WHITE}${FG_BOLD}($debian_chroot)}${DEFAULT_ATTRS}"
    PS1+="${BG_WHITE}${FG_RED}${FG_BOLD}\[\D{%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S}\]"
    PS1+="${FG_PURPLE}\u@\h"
    PS1+="${DEFAULT_ATTRS}${BG_SILVER}${FG_RED}:"
    PS1+="${FG_TEAL}${FG_BOLD}\w\n"
    PS1+="${FG_RED}\$ ${DEFAULT_ATTRS}"
else
    PS1="${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}"
    PS1+="\[\D{%Y-%m-%d-%H:%M:%S}\]"
    PS1+="\u@\h"
    PS1+=":"
    PS1+="\w\n"
    PS1+="\$ "
fi

Caveat 1: The time in the prompt is the time the last command finished rather than the time when the current command started

Caveat 2: I don’t know where to find where colour preferences have been set, so I’m hardcoding them here. It might look odd if I changed my colour preferences

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