UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hey all, I'm glad to have found this forum as I'm trying to dive head first into Solaris 8 - been working with it for a few months now and am finally getting a bit comfortable with the layout and concepts. In any case, on to the questions...

I was wondering how I would go about displaying the Effective Username (for example if I login as user1 initially, then su to root, now my Effective Username is root) in the prompt on the system.

Currently $PS1 is set to: '[$LOGNAME : $PWD]$' and I'd like to replace $LOGNAME with their Effective Username so that when one su's to another username you don't forget whether you're still root, etc.

Thanks for your input!

Does Solaris support `whoami`?

I use this for my prompt on my BSD systems:

Code:

OpenBSD:auswipe:/home/auswipe $ echo $PS1
`uname`:`whoami`:$PWD $

When I su to root, the prompt changes accordingly. Works like a champ.

The command "whoami" will get this value. You don't say which shell you are using, but all shells have some technique for putting the output of a commend into a variable.

But there is another standard that you should be aware of. When you become root the final character of your prompt should switch from $ to #. This is a more or less universal standard in unix.

Cool, thanks auswipe - I had forgotten about the good ol' `command` thing.

Perderabo - So, in theory, if I could test the output of the command `whoami` for root then I could tell it to use a different value for $PS1 (which would include the # rather than the $)? Sounds like I need to read up on some scripting, eh?

Thanks again!