Whenever I start my console gnome-terminal in Ubuntu, it starts in the home directory. How can I make it start in a different directory say ~/myfolder?
I tried to write cd ~/myfolder in ~/.profile but nothing happens.
If you start gnome-terminal like gnome-terminal --working-directory=myfolder it will start with the working directory at ~/myfolder so you could add a new entry to your menu to use that command instead of the other one.
I did this way - with script:
open 3 tabs in the same window size 170x40, each "tab" starts in a different directory.
gnome-terminal --geometry=170x40 --working-directory=myfolder1 \
--tab --working-directory=myfolder2 \
--tab --working-directory=myfolder3
Add the following to your ~/.bashrc
cd ~/myfolder
You could use the nautilus-open-terminal extension. This allows you to right-click on a folder in nautilus and open a terminal window with that directory as its working directory.
You can also run a terminal in the normal way, type "cd ", and drag a folder icon from nautilus to the window. This will paste the path of the folder into the command line and you then type return to change to that directory. You can do the same thing with regular files to paste their path and run commands on them.
Directory option
There is the option --working-directory to specify the startup directory of the terminal (no short option form).
The basic approach to open the terminal in /some/dir is
gnome-terminal --working-directory=/some/dir
but there is a trap...
Bad trap
Assuming we want to start the terminal in the directory ~/dir.
This does not work:
gnome-terminal --working-directory=~/dir
The command looks perfectly fine according to the option syntax, but the terminal starts in the home directory.
It's because it does not expand the tilde (~), for confusing reasons - see below.
Thesse do work:
gnome-terminal --working-directory=/home/auser/dir
gnome-terminal --working-directory=$HOME/dir
gnome-terminal --working-directory ~/dir
Tilde expansion
Note there is no = in the last variant. Because of this, the ~ is at the start of a shell word, and therefore is handeled by tilde expansion.
The problem is that ~ does not get expanded everywhere, but only in certain places. One of them is in variable assignments, like directory=~/dir. That's ok, ~ gets expanded to $HOME, but --working-directory=~/dir does not expand ~, because that is not a variable assignment, it only looks very similar.
Actually, this is how I turn it off for everyone by default.
gconftool-2 --direct \
--config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory/ \
--set -- type=bool /apps/nautilus-open-terminal/desktop_opens_home_dir true
From GNOME Terminal - Getting Started:
You can also specify a command that runs automatically when you start GNOME Terminal in the profile.
If the folder has a complicated path, ie not just ~/myfolder, you could create a symlink to it in your home directory so you can get to it quickly. You can also set the CDPATH environment variable to tell bash to search a list of directories when you type cd myfolder.
To open in my desired directory as root user I ran:
gnome-terminal --working-directory=/home/my-project/ -x bash -c "sudo su"
I'm impressed by
Neil's Mayhew comment
and
Volker's Siegel answer. I've tried to not only set default directory for
gnome-terminal but preserve habitual behavior of desktop environment as well (I'm using Linux Mint 17.1 Cinnamon,
GNOME Terminal 3.6.2, perhaps it also can be applied for other Gnome-congenered DEs). So let me put my two cents in.
Adding cd ~/myfolder at the very end of ~/.bashrc does the job. But as already mentioned it will affect every
interactive shell. Even more, if you open some directory in a file manager (Nemo or Nautilus or something like
this) and appeal to the context menu from there (e.g. right click and then select Open in Terminal) new instance of
gnome-terminal will be started in ~/myfolder regardless of the folder which was loaded in the file manager.
Even if you run gnome-terminal --working-directory=/some/other/folder explicitly it will still open ~/myfolder. Seems that the
approach with .bashrc is unusable.
gnome-terminal --working-directory=myfolder works fine but only when you use custom menu entry in you DE
(or custom shortcut on desktop) which runs terminal with this parameter. If you would like to run gnome-terminal from command line
or from mini-launcher (press Alt + F2), you have to type the parameter every time. Anyway this approach is more-or-less usable.
How gnome-terminal determines which folder to open? When --working-directory is not specified it opens current
working directory (e.g. $PWD) otherwise it opens directory specified explicitly.
I've found the following solution.
Create a file named gnome-terminal in your ~/bin folder. It will act as shortcut but from everywhere (start menu,
mini-launcher, other terminal instance, etc) because ~/bin is already in $PATH (at least in Linux Mint...). Make this file
executable. Then put the following content into the script:
#!/bin/bash
home_directory=~
if [ "$PWD" == "$home_directory" ]; then
# When 'gnome-terminal' was ran from either
# - start menu
# - mini-launcher
# ...
# parent directory is set to $HOME.
#
# We respect original command line arguments.
# For example, when terminal is ran from another
# terminal instance and '--working-directory' is
# specified explicitly we should left it as it is.
# If there are two '--working-directory' switches
# in the command line 'gnome-terminal' will pick up
# the last one.
#
# Also we use full path to executable here in order
# to prevent recursive calling of 'gnome-terminal' from
# '~/bin'.
/usr/bin/gnome-terminal --working-directory=/ "$#"
else
# 'gnome-terminal' was from another directory.
# We don't change anything.
/usr/bin/gnome-terminal "$#"
fi
If you run gnome-terminal from start menu you will see that current folder in new terminal is / (you can use any folder, for example, ~/myfolder because our custom wrapper is a Bash-script, so shell's expansion with work fine).
If you appeal to Open in Terminal in a file manager you will get current directory in the new terminal.
If you run gnome-terminal with explicit --working-directory parameter (perhaps, from existing terminal instance) new terminal instance will be opened in the directory you specified.
Related
When I start up command line, I want a specific directory to be opened by default without me having to type a long path.
e.g.
every time I open a terminal I want to be in directory ~/Desktop/foo/bar, so I want the following to happen
ctrl+alt+t
-> "terminal opens"
pwd
-> <yourPath>/Desktop/foo/bar
You can put this line at the end of your ~/.bashrc file (or equivalent if you're using a different shell than bash):
cd <yourPath>/Desktop/foo/bar
Just add a command to the end of your .bashrc
cd /path/to/dir
If it's Ubuntu terminal you can edit your profile, tick run a custom command instead of my shell and make it:
sh -c 'cd ~/Documents; exec "${SHELL:-sh}"'
What you might also consider if you want to move through directories quickly as bookmarks (almost), check out zsh which has a plugin called warp directory or if you don't want to make the leap to zsh, warp-drive fork.
I was going over this article and it states in step 3
Add the following to your .bashrc (or the appropriate startup file for your shell) To use it immediately, be sure to type “source .bashrc”
Any idea on how I could know what my startup file is ? I am using putty ?
Once you use putty to SSH into your server, you can run "ls -al .bashrc" and it should show you the file, edit this with an editor you know, if none, then use vi like this "vi .bashrc".
Go to where you need to edit the file and type in "i" to put vi in Insert mode. Next type in your text. Once you are done press the escape button and ":wq", no quotes for the i or :wq.
Next you can source it by typing "source .bashrc" and the setting you added should be part of your BASH shell environment now.
The .bashrc is a file which is called by bash before on each start of a new interactive shell. The file can be used to setup the environment, export variables, create aliases and functions and more...
There are usually multiple instances of that file. One per system and one per user to allow system wide configuration but also customization by users ( users bashrc will be sourced after the system wide bashrc and can overwrite things). I suggest to add the lines to your user's bashrc first. The file is located in your home folder. Type:
vi $HOME/.bashrc
in order to edit the file. If you aren't familiar with the vi editor you can choose an editor of your choice like nano, mcedit or even a GUI text editor, but mind that a GUI editor's file dialog may hide the file because it's name starts with a .
Once you managed to edit the file, start a new connection or simply type
source $HOME/.bashrc
in order to parse the file
A path which will work with any bash shell regardless of operating system (macOS/Linux/BSD etc.) is:
~/.bashrc
check your home directory ...because it exists in user's home directory.
check /home/username/ on your terminal if you are using RHEL or CentOS.
.bashrc and .bash_profile are bash config files (bash shell script) that bash runs(execute) whenever it is started interactively. It initializes an interactive (non-login) shell session and the config is read from these files $HOME/.bashrc
.bashrc is a standard hidden file located in your home directory.It determines the behaviour of interactive shells.
.bashrc runs on every interactive shell launch.If you say: $bash
For login shells, the config is read from these files:
/etc/profile (always sourced)
$HOME/.bash_profile (the rest of these files are checked in order until one is found,then no other are read)
$HOME/.bash_login
$HOME/.profile
For example: I added an echo to my .bashrc and .bash_profile files and whenever I called bash or bash -l command in terminal it showed me the echo.
I am trying to define some aliases in cygwin, but with no success. I am doing so like this at the end of the .bashrc file.
alias foo='pwd'
I have tried to add this line in a .bashrc file in both inside the home folder of cygwin and in the home folder for the Windows user I am on C:\Users\Nuno\. In both cases I have just appended this line to a copy of the /etc/skel/.bashrc file. In either cases, it didn't work.
I had this working before. I had to reinstall Cygwin and ever since it never worked properly again. I have removed all files (or at least think so, when doing the reinstallation). I have also noticed that in the first install (when it was working) cygwin already was creating .bash files in the home folder. Now, it doesn't.
I am on a machine running Windows 7.
EDIT: My cygwin home folder is set to the Windows home folder C:\Users\Nuno\. I have placed what I think is a valid .bashrc file there, but it still doesn't work.
Thanks in advance.
As me_and already explained what's going on I just want to add a workaround should you for whatever reason not be able or willing to remove Windows' HOME environment variable.
Normally the shortcut for Cygwin executes
C:\cygwin\bin\mintty.exe -i /Cygwin-Terminal.ico -
Instead you can create a batchfile with the following content and start that:
#echo off
set HOME=
start C:\cygwin\bin\mintty.exe -i /Cygwin-Terminal.ico -
That will start a a Cygwin windows whose home directory settings are not overridden by a Windows environment variable.
Your .bashrc file will be loaded from wherever Cygwin Bash thinks your home directory is when it starts. You've mentioned in your edit that you've changed your home directory, but not how, so it's possible you've made a mistake there.
Cygwin will load your home directory from one of two places, and if they differ it can cause problems:
The HOME environment variable. This will be picked up from however you launch Cygwin, so normally from Windows itself. You can see what environment variables you have defined by pressing Win+Pause, going to "Advanced system settings", "Environment Variables…". If "HOME" is in either "User variables" or "System variables", delete it – it's unnecessary and only causes problems.
Cygwin's /etc/passwd file (normally C:\Cygwin\etc\passwd from Windows). This will have a number of lines containing details of each user on the system; the seventh : separated field is the home directory. You can tell which user it's looking at by running whoami from a Cygwin bash shell.
If whoami reports nunos, you should have a line in Cygwin's /etc/passwd that looks something like the following:
nunos:unused:1001:513:U-System\nunos:S-1-2-34-567890-123456-7890123-1001:/home/nunos:/bin/bash
It's that /home/nunos that's important; if it's something different you should probably reset it to that, at which point you want to use the .bashrc in Cygwin's /home/nunos/.
You should also be very wary of directories that contain spaces for this. C:\Users\nunos should be fine, but beware in particular C:\Documents and Settings\nunos, which just won't work with Cygwin.
I had the same issue, where the aliases added to ~/.bashrc didn't work.
It seems that, for some reason, the ~/.bashrc was not executed when launching the console.
I stumbled upon a response that fixes the issues
So, you need to create a .bash_profile file. This one seems to be the default script, and put this code in it, to ensure that the .bashrc is executed.
# ~/.bash_profile: executed by bash for login shells.
if [ -e /etc/bash.bashrc ] ; then
source /etc/bash.bashrc
fi
if [ -e ~/.bashrc ] ; then
source ~/.bashrc
fi
That works for me, just make sure that .bash_profile is executable. (chmod +x ~/.bash_profile)
Here's a really quick and dirty way to do it, but it works fine for most things!
Let's say you want to always run 'ls --color' instead of just 'ls'. Instead of messing around with .bashrc stuff, you can create a simple .bat file that essentially bootlegs the original ls command.
Here's what I did:
cd /bin
echo ls2.exe %* --color > lsNew.bat
mv ls.exe ls2.exe
mv lsNew.bat ls.bat
So now, whenever you type in ls from CMD, you actually are calling ls.bat, which in turn calls ls2.exe --color, the original ls command with the --color flag, along with the rest of the arguments, which are nicely passed through %*.
I had the same problem, but I was using ConEmu to run my console. I had to go into settings and change the settings from this :
set CHERE_INVOKING=1 & %ConEmuDrive%\Programs\Cygwin\bin\sh.exe --login -i -new_console:C:"%ConEmuDrive%\Programs\Cygwin\Cygwin.ico"
to this:
set HOME= & set CHERE_INVOKING=1 &
%ConEmuDrive%\Programs\Cygwin\bin\bash.exe --login -i
-new_console:C:"%ConEmuDrive%\Programs\Cygwin\Cygwin.ico"
Then it would work correctly.
It works as explained from cygwin:
Create a file ".profile" in your windows home dir. This will load every time when you start cygwin.
You can edit the file with your alias or you can source the .bashrc.
If you'll source, insert "source .bashrc" and save .bashrc also in your windows home dir.
Now you can start editing the .bashrc.
This is working for me On windows 10 with Cygwin64. Don't worry "kubectl" is just the program that I want to run when I type "k". restart Cygwin terminal after the change.
Smith#NB-Smith-3 ~ echo "alias k=C:/Users/Smith/kube/kubectl" >> $HOME/.bash_profile
changes this file
C:\cygwin64\home\Smith.bash_profile
I had same problem is why the path not is correct, the path correct is: D:\C++\cygwin\home\USER_WINDOWS.bash_profile
I would like to create (and execute) a shell script in my home directory (/home/user).
Have tried the following:
printf "cd /mypath\n" > myShortcut.sh
chmod +x myShortcut.sh
sh myShortcut.sh
where am I going wrong?
(am trying to set up a shortcut to navigate to a different directory)
What is exactly wrong here? That you are still in /home/user after the script executes? Well thats because executing the script creates a child shell that returns to the parent shell once the script ends. Therefore your cd has NO EFFECT in your current shell.
If you want to execute the script in the current shell (as opposed to in a subshell), use the source (or .) command:
source myShortcut.sh
This should then change the directory as expected.
In addition, sourcing also allows you to set and change environment variables in the current shell--a very frequent question in its own right :-)
That won't work because of what the other answer says. The script operates in a child shell.
For a shortcut like that, you could set up an alias, edit the .bashrc file in your home directory and add a line like
alias shortcut='cd /mypath'
Substitute "shortcut" for whatever you want to name it, and mypath to the path you want.
Restart the shell (close terminal and reopen or w/e) and that should work just as you want.
Then you can use "shortcut" anywhere you want in the shell.
By default, when you create a new window in GNU Screen, it will start in the directory where Screen is invoked. I want to start a new window in GNU Screen at the current working directory of the window I'm currently in. How can I do that?
See the GNU Screen chdir command. All new windows created in Screen use this as their initial directory. Using this, you can do something like:
chdir /home/dan/newscreendir
screen
And your new window (along with any future created windows) will be in the set directory. If it's always going to be the current working directory you may be able to set something up in your screenrc to do this one in one command.
See the GNU Screen man page. It's quite comprehensive.
Screen chdir command
Screen cannot access your shell variable nor execute backticked commands. The closest I can get to doing it in one click is with a small Bash script like this:
screen -X setenv currentdir `pwd`
screen -X eval 'chdir $currentdir' screen
Or more compactly:
screen -X eval "chdir $PWD"
screen -X sends the command to the currently running Screen session. The first line creates a variable called currentdir. The second line sends the currentdir to the chdir command and then creates a new Screen window.
The simple solution is to put the following strings in your ~/.screenrc file and then use Ctrl + X to open new windows:
bind ^x
bind ^x stuff "screen -X chdir \$PWD;screen^M"
http://www.michaelkelleher.info had more tips for intermediate/advanced screen users, but since that site seems to have gone away, you can find the archive of it in Michael Kelleher's Personal Website on Archive.org.
I didn't find any solution that would work when you already had a process running in a window, so I came up with my own idea. I added following lines to my .bash_profile file:
scr_cd()
{
cd $1
screen -X chdir $PWD
}
if [ "$TERM" == 'screen' ]; then
alias cd=scr_cd
fi
The screen's working directory is updated every time you change a directory. Someone may not like this approach, but it works like a charm.
Perhaps this is specific to Byobu, but simply typing screen opens a new window in the current directory.
To make Screen open a new tab/window in the current directory, you can add the following code to your .screenrc file:
bind c stuff "screen bash^M"
This will cause the Ctrl + a c command to open new tabs/windows in the directory of the current window/tab.
Note: You must ensure that Screen does not start a login shell by default, because that will cause the shell start in the default directory for a login shell rather than the current directory. This means that in your .screenrc file, your shell command cannot include a dash ('-') character.
For example, this is wrong (i.e., it will start a login shell):
shell -$SHELL
But this is right (i.e., it will not start a login shell):
shell $SHELL
Note 2: Unfortunately, this method does not behave exactly like the default new window/tab command in Screen. Instead, it writes the command to the current window and executes it to create the new window/tab, so it will not work during some long running shell process. In other words, this keyboard shortcut can only be executed whenever normal shell commands can be executed.
Note 3: If you want Screen to open new windows/tabs in the current directory and open a login shell, you can add the following code to your .screenrc file:
bind c stuff "screen bash -l^M"
You could also run:
screen -X eval "chdir $(pwd)"
Or if you want to start a new window as soon as you set chdir, use:
screen -X eval "chdir $(pwd)" screen
I have a nearly perfect solution for Bash. :)
If you never use password to set a lockscreen password, just add this to file $HOME/.bash_profile:
export PROMPT_COMMAND='screen -p $WINDOW -X chdir "$PWD"'
Do you need a password? With this:
# The digest of password "abc" is ID1wIq4l2t7s6
export PROMPT_COMMAND='screen -p $WINDOW -X eval "password none" "chdir \"$PWD\"" "idle 0 password ID1wIq4l2t7s6"'
I just hope the developers of Screen add the environment variable PWD as soon as possible.
In your .screenrc file, add a line that uses the chdir command if you want the same one every time.
If you have a running Screen session inside that session, you can type:
screen -X chdir [argument]
Without an argument it will be your home directory, the same result as typing cd.
If you have a script (this is a programming Q&A site) or are outside Screen and Screen is running, you can issue:
`which screen` -x -X chdir [argument]
Which you'll likely follow with running some new process in Screen with:
`which screen` -x -X screen [command to run in that directory] [arguments for the command]