Putty title changes after login

Question

I am connecting with putty to a stock Ubuntu machine hosted at EC2, and notice the following:

When I connect, the title of the putty window appears at first as the hostname I enter (e.g. "myhostname.com"). After it's connected, the hostname changes to a different string - user@domU-12-31-20-0a-81-AB: ~ (different on each machine).

This look like an ethernet address of sort, I'm not sure. It's really annoying because once I open 2-3 putty consoles I can't remember which is which.

Is it possible a ~/.bashrc script run from the machine itself changes the putty title? Somewhere else I should look into?

Update:

I forgot to mention this ... but I have tried this and the title I set up in the connection is shown briefly when connecting, but then overriden just like the default hostname title.

Answer 1

It's most likely updated by your shell prompt ($PS1 in ~/.bashrc or the system-wide /etc/bash.bashrc). Look for \e]2; or \033]2; or a similar escape sequence.

Your given example looks like the usual "<user>@<host>:<path>" template, in which domU-12-31-20-0a-81-AB is the server's hostname as currently configured in the kernel. Most likely, it was assigned by an automated Xen domU creation tool based on your virtual server's Ethernet address.

You can change the current hostname by using hostname newname. To make it persist across reboots, look around in /etc – on every reboot, the hostname is read from the file /etc/hostname (other distributions may use /etc/sysconfig/hostname or similar).

Answer 2

The easier answer to this question is two configuration changes in your Putty preferences for the session(s):

1. In Window -> Behaviour set your desired Window title.

2. In Terminal -> Features check Disable remote-controlled window title changing.

Answer 3

You can change the title in putty (under linux) with this command:

PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD}\007"'

in this case, it will display your USER name, your HOSTNAME and it wil Print out your current Working Directory

or you can do this, with a string of your choosing:

xterm -T "Title of My xterm" -n "Title when minimized"

Answer 4

An exert from the /etc/bash.bashrc file is to run the following line to fix your title back to the default:

echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD}\007"

Answer 5

Yet another way, and to piggy-back on @Michael Terry's answer:

If you've already opened your session and don't want to close it - In Windows you can access the appropriate Putty configuration options by right-clicking the window title bar and select "Change Settings...". Keeping in mind changes here will not be saved once the session is closed.

Answer 6

Nothing new to what grawity already said but a lot more detailed/mind-blowing article here: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/index.html

Relevant section for title manipulation is: http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/xterm-title-bar-manipulations.html

Answer 7

For CentOS and RedHat Linux you can create an empty file:

touch /etc/sysconfig/bash-prompt-xterm

And change its permissions with:

chmod 555 /etc/sysconfig/bash-prompt-xterm

Then /ect/bashrc won't change your PuTTY title, which you can set in PuTTY's settings:

Window -> Behaviour -> Window title

Answer 8

If using MTpuTTy (useful for multiple parallel Putty sessions), use

Tools > Settings > General > Tab name > Show Display name

.

Answer 9

It's the PROMPT_COMMAND environment variable. You can temporarily disable it with unset PROMPT_COMMAND however to make it apply globally you have to prevent that environment variable from being set before the first shell prompt appears.

On an EC2 running Amazon Linux 2, you can do this by editing ~/.bashrc and at the end of it add the line unset PROMPT_COMMAND.

Don't forget to edit the .bashrc for both ec2-user and root so that the titles remain unchanged even as you change user.