first part of line in terminal

[Smoot Carl-Mitchell]

On Sat, 2011-01-08 at 23:51 -0500, Doug wrote:
> Before the ~$ on the terminal, there is--depending on how I installed 
> the os, I guess--a two word
> opening--I don't know what to call it.  On this particular distro, it 
> says doug at dougpclos:  On another
> machine, where I open up an Ubuntu terminal, it says doug at doug-MM061:
> 
> I assume that the first word--doug--is the user, i.e., me.  What is the 
> second?  Is it a machine name?
> I have to change it in various distros so as to make it consistent 
> across several distros installed on any one machine.  So where can I 
> find it to change it?  And what is MM0-61?  I'm sure I never put that in
> myself.  (Another distro on that same machine does not have MM061; it 
> has [doug at localhost ~]$  I don't
> know why that distro has the [] either.)

Look in /etc/bash.bashrc.  It is the PS1 prompt.  You can change it
globally there or you can change it per user in the .bashrc file in your
home directory.  Look in the bash man page under the PROMPTING section
which explains what all the backslashed escape characters mean.
-- 
Smoot Carl-Mitchell
System/Network Architect
voice: +1 480 922-7313
cell: +1 602 421-9005
smoot at tic.com