How to change or customise login prompt for ksh shell in Linux (with examples)

In my last article I had shown the steps to customise login prompt for bash shell

so now in this article I will share some examples which can be used to customise login prompt for 'ksh shell'

By default in Red Hat Linux we only get a "$" prompt for ksh shell

First let us create a user with default shell as 'ksh'

# useradd -s /bin/ksh deepak

As you see we only get a dollar ($) prompt for ksh shell based user

# su - deepak
Last login: Thu Feb 15 09:27:42 IST 2018 on pts/0
$
$

Display only hostname

export PS1='[${HOSTNAME}]$ '

[Ban17-adm01-a-br]$

Display username and hostname

export PS1='[${USER}@${HOSTNAME}]$ '

[deepak@Ban17-adm01-a-br]$

Display hostname with current working directory

export PS1='[${HOSTNAME}:${PWD}]$ '

[Ban17-adm01-a-br:/home/deepak]$

Display user, hostname and current working directory

export PS1='[${USER}@${HOSTNAME}:${PWD}]$ '

[deepak@Ban17-adm01-a-br:/home/deepak]$

To make the changes permanent, place your PS1 variable to .kshrc in the user home folder

# .kshrc

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

# use emacs editing mode by default
set -o emacs

# User specific aliases and functions

export PS1='${USER}@${HOSTNAME}:${PWD}> '

I hope the article was useful.