Why is the displayed name in bash different from the one in /etc/passwd?

Question

I remotely SSH login as root (using PUTTY),

The bash shell prompt becomes:

[root@yukiko /]#

When I entered:

getent passwd

The first line I see is this one:

root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

Shouldn't the bash shell prompt look like this? (which corresponds to the first line in /etc/passwd) ?

[root /]#

This is a VPS server with CentOS installed, yukiko is the desired customer login id I provided to the hosting company.

In this case yukiko is the machine's name. – Chris Nava Feb 07 '10 at 02:54 — Chris Nava, Feb 07 '10 at 02:54

score 5 · Accepted Answer · answered Feb 07 '10 at 01:58

5

If you type:

echo $PS1

at the Bash prompt, you'll see:

[\u@\h \w]

That says to display the username, an at sign, the hostname and the current working directory all inside square brackets.

Evidently, they've given your server the same hostname as your customer login ID.

answered Feb 07 '10 at 01:58

Dennis Williamson

1 Answers1