How to reduce the chance of screwing up in a Linux window.

I had multiple Linux terminal windows open, doing SSH to different machines. I typed shutdown in the wrong window – and the wrong server shutdown!

I had configured different profiles so I could have a white background, a green background and a yellow background for my different systems, but I had got careless and not used them.

I found a neat way of colouring the windows automatically.

xdotool is a command-line X11 automation tool, which allows you to programmatically press keys. You can use this to set the profile of a terminal window.

To create a profile

From the hamburger options,

• preferences,
• profiles +
• give the profile a name, create
• select the named profile, it will display customising options
• colours
• untick Use colours from system theme
• Click Text or Background
• Pick a colour, Select
• Close the window

Select a profile

Manually

1. From the hamburger option
   • Select Profile
   • Pick a profile
2. or Shift+f10
   • r (for Profile)
   • 3 for the third option in the list

Programmatically

xdotool key shift+F10 r 3

This does Shift+10, then select r for Profile, then picks the 3rd option

The clever bit

You can make an alias such as

alias somehost="xdotool key shift+F10 r 3; ssh user@somehost; xdotool key shift+F10 r 2"

or a somehost.sh script

#!/bin/sh
xdotool key shift+F10 r 3
ssh me@10.1.0.5
xdotool key shift+F10 r 2

If you enter the somehost command – it will select the 3rd profile, do the ssh. On exit from ssh it resets it back to the 2nd profile.