Change linux shell

Question

On my Centos7 Server I have different shells for my users.

For example the terminal as root looks like:

[root@hostname www]#.

The terminal as a different user looks like bash-4.2$.

If I type echo $0 to get the currently-used shell, I get /bin/bash on my different user and -bash on my root.

Do I have to configure the shell for my different user, in order to make it look like the shell for my root?

Is there a way to use the shell used in Debian (bash) to see the full path of my location? (root@server:/var/www# instead of root@server www).

Thanks for your help.

Answer 1

It sounds like your user is missing the skeleton files, the default .bashrc, .bash_profile etc. which are normally copied into a user's home directory from /etc/skel when a user is created. You can copy these files yourself if they are missing or corrupted.

Answer 2

A user's prompt is determined by the value of the shell variables PS1, PS2, PS3, PS4.

PS1 – The value of this parameter is expanded and used as the primary prompt string. 
      The default value for Bash is \s-\v\$ .
PS2 – The value of this parameter is expanded as with PS1 and used as the secondary 
      prompt string. The default value for Bash is >
PS3 – The value of this parameter is used as the prompt for the select command
PS4 – The value of this parameter is expanded as with PS1 and the value is printed 
      before each command bash displays during an execution trace.

Typically a user only customizes PS1.

Bash allows these variables to be customized by inserting one or more escaped special characters:

\a : ASCII bell character
\d : The date in “Weekday Month Date” format (e.g., “Tue May 26”)
\D{format} : the format is passed to strftime(3) and the result is inserted into
the prompt string; an empty format results in a locale-specific time representation. 
The braces are required
\e : Tne ASCII escape character
\h : The hostname up to the first ‘.’
\H : The full hostname
\j : The number of jobs currently managed by the shell
\l : The basename of the shell's terminal device name
\n : A newline
\s : The name of the shell
\t : The current time in 24-hour HH:MM:SS format
\T : The current time in 12-hour HH:MM:SS format
\@ : The current time in 12-hour am/pm format
\A : The current time in 24-hour HH:MM format
\u : The username of the current user
\v : The current version of bash (e.g., 2.00)
\V : The current release of bash, version and patch level (e.g., 4.12.0)
\w : The current working directory, with $HOME abbreviated with a tilde
\W : The basename of the current working directory, with $HOME abbreviated 
     with a tilde
\! : The history number of this command
\# : The command number of this command
\$ : If the effective UID is 0, a #, otherwise a $
\nnn : The character corresponding to the octal number nnn
\\ : A backslash
\[ : Begin sequence of non-printing characters, which could be used to embed 
     a terminal control sequence into the prompt
\] : End sequence of non-printing characters

Example:

fpm@fpmurphy ~]$ PS1="[\d \t \u@\h:\w ] $ "
[Sun Jul 05 23:44:17 fpm@fpmurphy:~ ] $ 

To persist the custom prompt across a reboot or a logout, add the prompt to the users $HOME/.bashrc, or to make it the default prompt for all users, add it to /etc/bashrc or create an entry under /etc/bashrc.d depending on your distribution.