John Summerfield wrote:
I don't know if that's the answer to your question, but some Linux distros (at least Red Hat 6.2 and 7) sets the window title of terminal windows to something prompt-like, with information about user, host,and current directory.and how I wish it wouldn't. My terminal windows are often a means to ssh off to some other machine, and the window title remains "summer possum etc"
Then this is because the login scripts on the host you're ssh:ing to doesn't set the window title on its terminal windows, hence your terminal window title stays the same when you log in to that host.
I ssh to a lot of different RH and Solaris boxes, and since both of these types of system seem set terminal window titles with user, host, directory information etc, the title always gets updated when I log in/out or change directories and such.
I just tested with logging in to a slackware box, and Slackware doesn't seem to set terminal window titles, hence the window title stays the same and doesn't get updated when I ssh into Slackware.
So this is a problem with the host you're ssh:ing to, not the one you're ssh:ing from. There's no way for example that gnome-terminal can know the directory you're in on the remote host; the shell on the remote host must explicitly be set up to provide this information to the terminal so it can be set in the terminal's window title.
Christian