I feel stupid asking, but I can't seem to find the answer to this anywhere. I'm trying to follow these instructions to edit my bash prompt, but there is no .bashrc in either my user directory (~/.bashrc), or in my home directory, or in the main file system directory.

There is no .bashrc in /etc/ (there is a bash.bashrc, however).

Do I create a .bashrc file in my user or home directory? Is there a better, more recent set of instructions for modifying the bash prompt?

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10 Answers

Don't forget it is a hidden file inside your home directory (you would not be the first to do a ls -l and thinking it is not there).

Do a:

ls -la ~/ | more

There should be a .bashrc on the first page. If not just create it with:

vi ~/.bashrc

and add in the lines you need to add into it.

Permissions of my .bashrc are:

-rw-r--r-- 1 discworld discworld 3330 Mar 10 16:03 .bashrc

(chmod 644 .bashrc to make it rw r r).

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User specific, hidden by default.

~/.bashrc

If not there simply create one.

System wide:

/etc/bash.bashrc

There is a .bashrc in every user's home folder (99.99% of the time) as well as one system-wide (which I don't know the location of in Ubuntu).

The quickest way to access it is nano ~/.bashrc from a terminal (replace nano with whatever you like to use).

If this is not present in a user's home folder the system-wide .bashrc is used as a fallback as it is loaded before the user's file. You could simply copy and paste it (with root permissions of course), but a .bashrc is not entirely essential (it may be required to make things work. I haven't found out) at a user level as it mostly overrides the system-wide one with user-specific tweaks. You could write your own though.

The main components for that users may tweak are PS1 (the Bash prompt defaults to display user@localhost:pwd $) and aliases as well as setting a color prompt and maybe PS2 (busy state message).

Use gedit ~/.bashrc, it will allow you to modify ~/.bashrc using gedit.

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It is hidden because of the '.' it starts with.

list it with

ls -al

or enable "show hidden files" under the view menu in nautilus (Ctrl-H will also do the trick).

You can edit it with your favorite text editor from your home directory e.g.

cd

to go to your home directory then:

emacs .bashrc

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If .bashrc is not in your home folder, even after you list the hidden files, you can copy it from:

/etc/skel/.bashrc

Use nano ~/.bashrc to open and edit the .bashrc file. (This will create the file if it does not yet exist)

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if not in home directory, you can just copy from /etc/bash.bashrc, and make it source for your terminal, by typing in your terminal source .bashrc from your home directory after copying.

If you use encryption and work from the command line you might not see it as one need to mount the real home-dir first (in contrast to in the graphical UI where this is done automaticallu) by the command:

ecryptfs-mount-private

(I had the same question and stumbled upon this question; but found my answer in the readme instead)

Bashrc file is a hidden file inside the home directory. It is actually, give the path directions.

And those are wanted to edit .bashrc file, try this command gedit ~/.bashrc instead of this ~/.bashrc .

This command gedit ~/.bashrc directly take you to the text editor, where you can edit it easily, as you know.