Fedora Silverblue uses a read-only /usr folder, meaning software should be installed via other means. One of those means is via Podman containers using a tool called Toolbox (which is being renamed Toolbx).

When you enter one of these Toolbox containers, your prompt gains a small pink dot and the Hostname changes to "toolbox". This effect is, in my opinion, much too subtle.

Let's remedy this by editing the PS1 prompt in .bashrc. TL;DR look at my .bashrc here: Github Dotfiles

Adding Some Colour and Flair

Let's add a bit of colour, and some shapes, around the PS1:

export PS1="\[\033[1;37m\]<\u|\[\033[32m\]\w\[\033[97m\]>\[\033[0m\] "

This wraps the PS1 in angled brackets, replaces the hostname with the current working directory, sets the main colour to white and the current directory to green.

Great, much better!

Toolbox Indication

Now we'll need this to change when we enter a Toolbox. As a Millenial, I'll use an emoji to indicate this, and also change the colour of the prompt from white to brown when inside a Toolbox.

We can check if we're in a Toolbox by either reading the hostname, or checking for the metadata file /run/.containerenv, then echo a different emoji:

toolbox_or_not() {
    HN=$(hostname)
    if [ $HN = "toolbox" ]
    then
        echo "🧰\[\033[38;5;094m\]"
    else
        echo 💻
    fi
}

Now we'll add a call to this to our PS1:

export PS1="\[\033[1;37m\]<$(toolbox_or_not):\u|\[\033[32m\]\w\[\033[97m\]>\[\033[0m\] "

Now there's an emoji and a colon before our username, and the Toolbox's prompt will be brown:

Now we just need to indicate which toolbox we are actually on. The hostname for all toolboxes is just "toolbox", so that's no help. Luckily we have that /run/.containerenv file:

get_toolbox_name() {
    awk 'match($0, /name=/) {print $0}' /run/.containerenv | awk -F '"' '$0=$2'
}

Now we can get a second emoji to represent the Toolbox's name:

get_toolbox_emoji() {
    TBNAME=$(get_toolbox_name)
    case $TBNAME in

        brave)
            echo 🦁
            ;;

        chrome)
            echo ⚽
            ;;

        py)
            echo 🐍
            ;;

        *)
            echo 🤷
            ;;
    esac
}

And we just add this function to our toolbox_or_not like so:

toolbox_or_not() {
    HN=$(hostname)
    if [ $HN = "toolbox" ]
    then
        echo "🧰$(get_toolbox_emoji)\[\033[38;5;094m\]"
    else
        echo 💻
    fi
}

Now we have a much clearer indicator that a terminal window is actually a Toolbox, and a visual indicator as to which Toolbox we are in!