And yes, this needs it own post simply for the fact that this is an insane prompt. Heres what it is/can do:

1. Automatically shortens itself if the path is longer than 18 charachters
   This is what I’ve always wanted since I usually name my folders after the website URL — and I HATE 2 line prompts.
2. Changes to red if the last command didn’t have a return code of 0
3. Includes your bash history # for easy history command repeating
4. Is pretty neat and trim

Why is this rad?

Prompt Madness!

I’ll let this image explain what it does and how it looks…

I’m tossing up a text file here -> best_bash_prompt_ever.txt — since the escaping will probably be messed up.

export PROMPT_COMMAND='PS1="\[\033[0;33m\][\!]\`if [[ \$? = "0" ]]; then echo "\\[\\033[32m\\]"; else echo "\\[\\033[31m\\]"; fi\`[\u.\h: \`if [[ `pwd|wc -c|tr -d " "` > 18 ]]; then echo "\\W"; else echo "\\w"; fi\`]\$\[\033[0m\] "; echo -ne "\033]0;`hostname -s`:`pwd`\007"'

If you think you’re interested — this post is about the following:

1. How to get your current user/directory in the title of terminal (iTerm.app for this post — same applies for Terminal.app though)
2. How to make the backspace/delete keys work properly in nano/pico on local and remote servers
3. Update your current user/path in the title when you SSH into a remote machine
4. And how to setup password-less SSH, just because its on topic

.bashrc modifications

Making Terminal.app’s title update to the current user & path for both local and remote servers while letting the backspace and delete key work properly — all in one solution!

Add the following lines to both your local & remote .bashrc

# this is what updates your Terminal's title -- you can of course modify this
# but im not explaining how -- google it
export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\\033]0;${USER}:${PWD}\\007"'

# this will make OSXs backspace & delete keys work properly
# in nano & pico
export TERM=xterm
stty erase ^H

# fancy prompt you say?
# again -- google for more info on this
export PS1="\\[\\033[0;34m\\][\\!]\[\\033[0;32m\\][\\u.\\h: \\w]\[\\033[0;32m\\]\\$\\[\\033[0m\\] "

#gives you something like:
# [0][rob.hades: ~]$ echo 'hello world!'

Now lets bind our servers for SSH so we don’t need passwords

Passwords are annoying — especially when you are using scp and rsync a lot.

Here is a very simple way to drop those passwords and have SSH do all the work.

In your terminal app (Locally)

Make your .ssh directory
$>mkdir -p ~/.ssh && cd ~/.ssh

Generate yourself some keys
~/.ssh $>ssh-keygen -t dsa -f ~/.ssh/id_dsa

Copy your public key to your remote server (Make sure the remote server has a ~/.ssh directory as well!)
~/.ssh $>scp id_dsa.pub {user}@{remoteserver}:.ssh

In the remote computer

Add that public key to your authorized_keys file for SSH
$>cd .ssh && cat id_dsa.pub >> authorized_keys2

Cleanup those files and make sure the authorized_keys file is set to the right perms.
~/.ssh $>chmod 640 authorized_keys2 && rm id_dsa.pub

That should make your life a bit more convenient