Fix terminal title after SSH remote logging to another machine

Question

right now I am using an one-line perl code to change titles of my terminal bars,

print("\e]0;@ARGV\7");

but every time after I ssh to another remote machine, the title will be modified by the host (by which I'm not particularly bothered). But after I exit from the connection, the modified title remains. Is there a way to fix this? essentially I want a fixed title for my terminals when operating locally.

I primarily use xfce terminal and terminator under either CentOS or Debian. Thanks.

EDIT

Another subtlety is that, rather having all terminals the same name, I would prefer to have the freedom to edit their titles on-the-fly but only forbid SSH session from modifying what I edited.

score 12 · Answer 1 · answered Jan 30 '17 at 19:02

Solution: add some functions ~/.bashrc to do something after ssh and su commands

function title()
{
   # change the title of the current window or tab
   echo -ne "\033]0;$*\007"
}

function ssh()
{
   /usr/bin/ssh "$@"
   # revert the window title after the ssh command
   title $USER@$HOST
}

function su()
{
   /bin/su "$@"
   # revert the window title after the su command
   title $USER@$HOST
}

Note: restart bash after edits to ~/.bashrc

Example:

# title is "user1@boxA"
ssh boxB  # auto changes title while on boxB to "user1@boxB"
exit
# title returns back to "user1@boxA" because of our title call in ssh()
su - user2 # auto changes title while switched user to user2: "user2@boxA"
exit
# title returns back to "user1@boxA" because of our title call in su()

Hope that helps.

slightly inaccurate to say revert as you do not check to see what it was before ... if you queried and saved the prior value tho ;-) — nhed, Mar 23 '17 at 20:10

score 6 · Accepted Answer · edited Oct 25 '14 at 01:17

6

I don't know about window titles, but I have been trying to have my system do something on terminating a ssh session—actually, after terminating a ssh session. In short: it doesn't work like that. Basically you have three choices:

Write a wrapper around ssh, i.e., an executable shell script named ssh that takes precedence over /usr/bin/ssh in your $PATH which contains the line exec /usr/bin/ssh $@ somewhere in its middle. This enables you to have your shell do some stuff before and after the effective ssh binary is run, while keeping th eoverhead to a minimum.
Write a patch against the SSH sources of your choice to provide you a cleanup hook that executes a shell command passed via commandline or some config-setting. That's what we want.
Have PROMPT_COMMAND evaluate the output of history. Basically a more generic and more ugly approach to 1.

edited Oct 25 '14 at 01:17

Chris Page

398

answered Jun 15 '12 at 12:06

Bananguin

7,984

basically i just wrote a simple script to grab the current title and save it before SSH session, then recover the title afterwards. – nye17 Jun 15 '12 at 19:04
4

@nye17 Can you post your solution script that you used ? – Reg Mem Jul 29 '14 at 18:28
1

I posted my solution script below. should be a close match what @nye17 did. http://unix.stackexchange.com/a/341277/112190 – phyatt Jan 30 '17 at 19:03

score 4 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 15 '12 at 05:18

4

Configure your local shell dotfile (e.g. $PROMPT_COMMAND in ~/.bashrc) to set the terminal title appropriately, using the same mechanism.

For example:

export PROMPT_COMMAND="printf '\e]0;bash\7\n'"

edited Jun 15 '12 at 05:18

Kuba hasn't forgotten Monica

165

answered Jun 15 '12 at 02:43

Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams

45,725

prompt_command has nothing to do the title of your terminal window, right? I have prompt_command set up but only for the prompt. 2. I still need a mechanism to remember and activate my local setting after exiting the ssh logging.

nye17

Jun 15 '12 at 04:02

2

The prompt command simply emits the necessary escape sequence for your terminal to rename its title bar. :) – Kuba hasn't forgotten Monica Jun 15 '12 at 04:03

but I also want the freedom to rename whatever terminal I want, rather than having every single session the same name. In practice, I basically edit the terminal title manual and hope that terminal to stay having fixed title even after SSH login/logout. Does it make sense? – nye17 Jun 15 '12 at 05:23

2

So then put the desired title in a variable, and output that. – Ignacio Vazquez-Abrams Jun 15 '12 at 06:08

1

If you use this terminal escape sequence to set a null title (e.g., export PROMPT_COMMAND="printf '\e]0;\7\n'"), then your terminal emulator can set the window title as it sees fit. When you ssh to a remote host that sets the terminal title, your terminal emulator will show that title, and when you logout, it will revert to using its own title. At least, that's how the macOS Terminal app works. – claymation Apr 16 '17 at 18:52

This works for me. I am using terminator. – nitin Jul 18 '17 at 06:10

score 3 · Answer 4 · answered Jan 27 '18 at 19:50

Other answers wouldn't work for me when I exit SSH, but got me close. Adding setw automatic-rename works when I exit remote ssh session so it auto renames and don't have to exit the window anymore to reset. [Jan. 2018 - Debian 9]

ssh() {
tmux rename-window "$*"
command ssh "$@"
tmux setw automatic-rename
}

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Aug 19 '12 at 09:08

3

ADD these lines to ~/.bashrc

# If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir
case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
    PS1="\[\e]0;${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h: \w\a\]$PS1"

    ;;
*)
    ;;
esac

works well with debian based linuxes

answered Aug 19 '12 at 09:08

hrushikesh

39

3

IT doesn't set the title though... – Bananguin Jul 29 '14 at 19:55
It usually works better to use PROMPT_COMMAND instead of using PS1, since you don’t have to include the \[ \] bracketing and it can eliminate some quoting. – Chris Page Oct 25 '14 at 00:41

score 3 · Answer 6 · answered Jun 25 '20 at 08:58

https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/341277/25975 and https://unix.stackexchange.com/a/28520/25975 have been combined for a simple clean solution at https://drone-ah.com/2020/06/25/how-to-terminal-title-after-disconnecting-from-ssh/. It also restores the previous title.

function ssh()
{
    # push current title and icon to stack
    echo -ne '\e[22t'
    # Execute ssh as expected
    /usr/bin/ssh "$@"
    # revert the window title after the ssh command
    echo -ne '\e[23t'
}

score 2 · Answer 7 · answered Aug 05 '14 at 14:08

One solution is to change the terminal variable to vt100 before ssh'ing, e.g. run

export TERM=vt100

This works because usually initialization scripts look at the terminal variable and only change it title it it's xterm. You lose alternate screens, colors and maybe some other fancy features you may or may not appreciate.

If you want to keep the local terminal as xterm, alias ssh to change the terminal variable on the fly, like

alias ssh='TERM=vt100 /usr/bin/ssh'

it changes the way things are displayed. colours are not shown — npk, Sep 24 '19 at 06:01

score 1 · Answer 8 · answered Dec 03 '14 at 18:26

1

I fixed this issue by adding this to my PS1 in my .bashrc file.

\[\e]2;\u@\H:\w\a\]

Therefore the whole line looks like this(I've customized my PS!:

export PS1='\[\e]2;\u@\H:\w\a\]\n($LOGNAME@$HOSTNAME) \t\n[$PWD]: '

I hope that helps others.

answered Dec 03 '14 at 18:26

cwiggs

11

If you use this terminal escape sequence to set a null title (e.g., export PS1='\[\033]0;\007\]\h:\W \u\$ '), then your terminal emulator can set the window title as it sees fit. When you ssh to a remote host that sets the terminal title, your terminal emulator will show that, and when you logout, it will revert to using its own title. At least, that's how the macOS Terminal app works. – claymation Apr 16 '17 at 18:54

score 0 · Answer 9 · edited Jan 14 '20 at 10:13

0

If the remote server is Debian, put the below code at end of ~/.bashrc

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

edited Jan 14 '20 at 10:13

Paulo Tomé

3,782

answered Jan 14 '20 at 09:44

Mahendra

1

score 0 · Answer 10 · answered Oct 29 '20 at 10:03

This might be not exactly the most direct approach, but I use remote command execution in order to execute the command remotely on request in some scenarios, but to stay in my former terminal session where applicable like this

ssh root@server 'tail -f /var/log/someApp/appLog.log'

that way my original non-ssh title stays in place, intact

score 0 · Answer 11 · answered Sep 01 '21 at 13:33

0

I used this custom function in my .bashrc

function s(){
  ssh -t $1 "echo -en '\033]0;'"$1"'\a';bash"
}

answered Sep 01 '21 at 13:33

Heraknos

101

3

Welcome to Unix & Linux! Brevity is acceptable, but fuller explanations are better. – Kusalananda Sep 01 '21 at 15:23

Fix terminal title after SSH remote logging to another machine

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