I usually have 5 or more ssh connections to various servers, and putting this command in my .bash_profile file makes my putty window or x terminal window title change to this easily recognizable and descriptive text. Includes the username, group, server hostname, where I am connecting from (for SSH tunneling), which device pts, current server load, and how many processes are running.
You can also use this for your PROMPT_COMMAND variable, which updates the window title to the current values each time you exec a command.
I prefix running this in my .bash_profile with
[[ ! -z "$SSH_TTY" ]] &&
which makes sure it only does this when connecting via SSH with a TTY.
Here's some rougher examples from http://www.askapache.com/linux-unix/bash_profile-functions-advanced-shell.html
# If set, the value is executed as a command prior to issuing each primary prompt.
#H=$((hostname || uname -n) 2>/dev/null | sed 1q);W=$(whoami)
#export PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${W}@${H}:${PWD/#$HOME/~} ${SSH_TTY/\/dev\//} [`uptime|sed -e "s/.*: \([^,]*\).*/\1/" -e "s/ //g"`]\007"'
#PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;`id -un`:`id -gn`@`hostname||uname -n 2>/dev/null|sed 1q` `command who -m|sed -e "s%^.* \(pts/[0-9]*\).*(\(.*\))%[\1] (\2)%g"` [`uptime|sed -e "s/.*: \([^,]*\).*/\1/" -e "s/ //g"` / `command ps aux|wc -l`]\007"'
#[[ -z "$SSH_TTY" ]] || export PROMPT_COMMAND
#[[ -z "$SSH_TTY" ]] && [[ -f /dev/stdout ]] && SSH_TTY=/dev/stdout
And here's a simple function example for setting the title:
function set_window_title(){ echo -e "\033]0; ${1:-$USER@$HOST - $SHLVL} \007"; }
Show Sample Output
This will send the web page at $u to recipient@example.com . To send the web page to oneself, recipient@example.com can be replaced by $(whoami) or $USER. The "charset" is UTF-8 here, but any alternative charset of your choice would work. `wget -O - -o /dev/null $u` may be considered instead of `curl $u` . On some systems the complete path to sendmail may be necessary, for instance /sys/pkg/libexec/sendmail/sendmail for some NetBSD.
Add -n to last command to restrict to last num logins, otherwise it will pull all available history. Show Sample Output
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