Question

Custom Path on Ubuntu start

I’ve been trying to customize my Ubuntu terminal.

My next self made task is for the Ubuntu terminal to load a specific path rather than the default on on opening.

To be more specific, I have Nginx installed and want to open that folder on start up.


Submit an answer


This textbox defaults to using Markdown to format your answer.

You can type !ref in this text area to quickly search our full set of tutorials, documentation & marketplace offerings and insert the link!

Sign In or Sign Up to Answer

These answers are provided by our Community. If you find them useful, show some love by clicking the heart. If you run into issues leave a comment, or add your own answer to help others.

KFSys
Site Moderator
Site Moderator badge
December 25, 2021
Accepted Answer

Hi @teohristov,

In such cases, you can use the .bashrc file in your user’s root folder. In the .bashrc file you can add any command you want, you can create aliases and so on.

Basically, what you need to do is go to your user’s root folder:

cd ~
nano .bashrc

On the top of the file add

cd /path/to/nginx/installation

where /path/to/nginx/installation is your actual path.

Additionally, you do not have to limit yourself to only this command. Let’s say you want to list the directory as well, just for the kicks of it. You can add ls -lah in the same file underneath the cd command as well.

Usually, once you’ve created aliases or added such commands to your .bashrc file, you need to either reload it or open a new terminal(it reloads/loads by default on new terminal.). You can do it with:

source ~/.bashrc
KFSys
Site Moderator
Site Moderator badge
December 27, 2021

Hi @teohristov,

Just to give you more information on what else you can achieve with changing/customizing your .bashrc file, you can also add colors to your terminal from there.

To add colors to the shell prompt use the following export command syntax: ‘\e[x;ym $PS1 \e[m’ Where,

  • \e[ : Start the color scheme.
    
  • x;y : Color pair to use (x;y)
    
  • $PS1 : Your shell prompt variable.
    
  • \e[m : Stop color scheme.
    

You can change the color of the shell prompt by setting the PS1

To set a red color prompt, type the following export command:

export PS1="\e[0;31m[\u@\h \W]\$ \e[m "

Here is a list of colors:

  • Black 0;30
  • Blue 0;34
  • Green 0;32
  • Cyan 0;36
  • Red 0;31
  • Purple 0;35
  • Brown 0;33
  • Blue 0;34
  • Green 0;32
  • Cyan 0;36
  • Red 0;31
  • Purple 0;35
  • Brown 0;33

This comment has been deleted

    Try DigitalOcean for free

    Click below to sign up and get $200 of credit to try our products over 60 days!

    Sign up

    Get our biweekly newsletter

    Sign up for Infrastructure as a Newsletter.

    Hollie's Hub for Good

    Working on improving health and education, reducing inequality, and spurring economic growth? We'd like to help.

    Become a contributor

    Get paid to write technical tutorials and select a tech-focused charity to receive a matching donation.

    Welcome to the developer cloud

    DigitalOcean makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow — whether you're running one virtual machine or ten thousand.

    Learn more
    DigitalOcean Cloud Control Panel