How do I check which terminal I am using?

Question

I have Ubuntu on my machine and I am running awesome window manager on top of it. How do I check which terminal I am running? Is there a command for it?

Answer 1

TL;DR

• to find currently running shell use ls -l /proc/$$/exe
• to find currently running terminal, use xprop _NET_WM_PID WM_CLASS. The value of pid later can be passed to ps -p <pid> -o args command.

• Technically, for terminal emulator you don't even need a command, as stated in the comments:

  what do you mean by which? Click Help --> About is that it? – JoKeR

Shell vs Terminal

First thing we need to have clarified is what exactly is being asked - find out the running shell or running terminal. Often these two terms are used interchangeably, but they are different things altogether. Shell is the command-line interpreter, specifically interactive shell is the prompt plus text field where you enter commands. Shells can also be non-interactive, for example a script starts non-interactive shell, or bash -c 'echo hello world' also starts non-interactive shell.

By contrast, terminal is the interface to shell ( though it could be another application as well). Originally terminal referred to actual hardware, but nowadays they're mostly software. What you see when you press Ctrl+Alt+t or click on the terminal icon in GUI, that starts a terminal emulator, a window which mimics behavior of hardware, and within that window you can see the shell running. Ctrl+Alt+F2 (or any of the 6 function keys) will open virtual console, aka tty. I recommend reading Why is a virtual terminal “virtual”, and what/why/where is the “real” terminal? for more info on the specifics.

Getting the shell information

Each user has a default shell assigned to them in /etc/passwd for their username. Assuming you are using default configuration and haven't called another shell explicitly as a command, it is sufficient to do:

echo $SHELL

But of course this only shows default value. Suppose we do the following:

user@ubuntu:~$ dash
$

We were originally in bash, but started interactive session of /bin/dash, Ubuntu's POSIX or system shell. The variable $SHELL won't change, because that's not its purpose - it shows default not current value. We will need to approach this from another perspective - the perspective of a process, which is something I've covered in Am I using bash or sh?

$ echo $$
4824
$ cat /proc/4824/comm                                                          
mksh
$ bash
xieerqi@eagle:~$ echo $$
6197
xieerqi@eagle:~$ cat /proc/6197/comm
bash

Here we take advantage of /proc/ filesystem. The name of the process and command-line parameters are displayed in /proc/<pid>/comm. All we need is to provide shell's PID, which is what $$ does. In the example above I am adding that separately, but there is nothing stopping us from doing just

cat /proc/$$/comm

Variation on the theme could also be

ps -p $$ -o args

Another way we could approach this is via checking where /proc/<pid>/exe. This file is a symlink that points to the executable file. Thus we can do

user@ubuntu:~$ ls -l /proc/$$/exe
lrwxrwxrwx 1 adminx adminx 0 Apr  4 18:20 /proc/1241/exe -> /bin/bash
user@ubuntu:~$ sh
$ ls -l /proc/$$/exe
lrwxrwxrwx 1 adminx adminx 0 Apr  4 18:20 /proc/1255/exe -> /bin/dash

Either of the two approaches works in 99% of the cases. Of course, there are ways in which they can be subverted. For instance, symlink won't point anywhere if the executable was deleted shortly after the shell started ( and in that case you probably will encounter system issues, since removing /bin/sh, /bin/dash, or even /bin/bash is not recommended - after all a lot of scripts rely on them, especially system-level ones). Command name for shell is usually set as the very first argument in execve() syscall. This is covered in How does bash know how it is being invoked? , so if you have an application that launches a shell via execve(), it could give it any name. But these are non-standard and non-typical things, that should be avoided for the sake of consistency and security.

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Getting Terminal Information

We can start with the environment variables. Many terminals seem to mask themselves as xterm-compatible, which is reported by echo $TERM or echo $COLORTERM. But then environment variables are not very reliable tool. They can be set and unset. We can do the same thing with PIDs again, except this time we will look at parent PID. As you may remember, terminal is the interface to the shell and often starts the shell itself. Therefore we can find out what process is the parent process of our shell:

$ ps -p $$ -o args,ppid
COMMAND                      PPID
bash                         1234
$ ps -p 1234 -o args
COMMAND
/usr/lib/gnome-terminal/gnome-terminal-server

Let's try with another terminal app, sakura:

$ ps -p $$ -o args,ppid
COMMAND                      PPID
/bin/bash                   16950
$ ps -p 16950 -o args
COMMAND
sakura

From there we can already see that what started this shell is gnome-terminal. This method of course works assuming you're working with interactive shell. If we're trying to find out the parent of bash -c '...' or the shell started via ssh, for example, PID may very well be from non-terminal application and maybe non-GUI at all.

So if we want to specifically deal with GUI terminal, what we can do is run xprop, click on the desired window, grep its pid, and find out what's the name of that process matching pid. Or in other words:

$ ps aux | grep $(xprop | awk -F'='  '/PID/ {print $2}')                       
xieerqi   2124  0.6  1.7 208068 34604 ?        Sl   18:47   1:49 gnome-terminal

Additionally, as per specifications , window managers should set WM_CLASS property. Thus, we can get that from xprop as well:

$ xprop WM_CLASS 
WM_CLASS(STRING) = "sakura", "Sakura"

Of course, this also has its 1% of disadvantages: setting WM_CLASS properties relies on window manager doing that, and PID is not guaranteed for a window to be accurate ( see What process created this X11 window? ), which may involve complex debugging. And these aren't shortcomings of the methods themselves but of X11 server. However, most stable and well known window managers ( like openbox, Metacity, blackbox ) and most applications are well behaved so we shouldn't expect problems with something like Gnome Terminal or Terminator.

But when it comes to GUI terminal emulators, we don't even need to find a command. We can just use the About dialog of the window itself. Exception to that rule is xterm.

Answer 2

If you want to know the terminal program you are using, use this:

ps -o 'cmd=' -p $(ps -o 'ppid=' -p $$)

Run this just after opening the terminal (shell) without forking any further shell instance.

When you open up the terminal program, it basically spawns a child program, a shell. So the parent of the spawned shell is the terminal itself. In other words, the PPID of the shell is the PID of terminal program.

Here we are finding the parent process ID (PPID) of the shell (bash) by ps -o 'ppid=' -p $$ , which will be the process ID of terminal program.

Then we are finding the process name from the PID:

$ ps -o 'cmd=' -p $(ps -o 'ppid=' -p $$)
gnome-terminal

It is basically a one liner of:

$ ps -o 'ppid=' -p $$
 2268

$ ps -o 'cmd=' -p 2268
gnome-terminal

Answer 3

The short version (thx @Serg)

cat /etc/alternatives/x-terminal-emulator

---

The long version

sudo update-alternatives --config x-terminal-emulator

and look for the * in the output

;)

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Example output

There are 7 alternatives which provide `x-terminal-emulator’.

Selection Alternative
———————————————–
    1 /usr/bin/xterm
    2 /usr/bin/uxterm
    3 /usr/bin/koi8rxterm
    4 /usr/bin/lxterm
 *+ 5 /usr/bin/gnome-terminal.wrapper
    6 /usr/bin/konsole
    7 /usr/bin/xfce4-terminal.wrapper

Press enter to keep the default[*], or type selection number:

---

Or, thanks to @muru, here is more detailed output

$ update-alternatives --display x-terminal-emulator
x-terminal-emulator - auto mode
  link currently points to /usr/bin/gnome-terminal.wrapper
/usr/bin/gnome-terminal.wrapper - priority 40
  slave x-terminal-emulator.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/gnome-terminal.1.gz
/usr/bin/koi8rxterm - priority 20
  slave x-terminal-emulator.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/koi8rxterm.1.gz
/usr/bin/lxterm - priority 30
  slave x-terminal-emulator.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/lxterm.1.gz
/usr/bin/mate-terminal.wrapper - priority 30
  slave x-terminal-emulator.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/mate-terminal.1.gz
/usr/bin/uxterm - priority 20
  slave x-terminal-emulator.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/uxterm.1.gz
/usr/bin/xterm - priority 20
  slave x-terminal-emulator.1.gz: /usr/share/man/man1/xterm.1.gz
Current 'best' version is '/usr/bin/gnome-terminal.wrapper'.

Answer 4

Use tty - prints the file name of the terminal connected to standard input.

In gnome-terminal:

 $ tty
 /dev/pts/2

In a virtual terminal (ALT+F4):

 $ tty
 /dev/tty4

Answer 5

If you just want the name of the terminal program, you'll most probably find it under Help > About.

Answer 6

The best way is to install neofectch

sudo apt install neofetch

Just type the below given command and checkout the terminal

neofetch

Answer 7

cat /etc/alternatives/x-terminal-emulator | grep exec

Sample output:

exec('gnome-terminal',@args);

There's the answer for my system: gnome-terminal.

So, typing gnome-terminal into my terminal will now open up another identical terminal window.

Sources:

• Sergiy Kolodyazhnyy's comment under A.B.'s answer.

Answer 8

Run neofetch and it will tell you.

Answer 9

When it is run in an interactive shell, the solution proposed by heemayl ps -o 'cmd=' -p $(ps -o 'ppid=' -p $$) accurately retrieves the terminal program, which is the parent of the shell. Within a script, however, the immediate parent is the invoking shell, not the terminal. Consequently, this command yields the shell name — Bash, in my case — when executed within a script. To address this, one could traverse up the process tree from the script, examining the parent of each shell process until encountering a non-shell process. This non-shell process is then presumed to be the terminal program.

Bash:

pid=$$
while true; do
    cmd=$(ps -o 'cmd=' -p $pid | cut -d ' ' -f 1)
    if [[ "$cmd" != "bash" ]]; then
        terminal=$cmd
        break
    fi
    pid=$(ps -o 'ppid=' -p $pid)
done
echo $terminal

Other shells:

pid=$$
while true; do
    cmd=$(ps -o 'cmd=' -p $pid | cut -d ' ' -f 1)
    case "$cmd" in
        bash|sh|csh|ksh|zsh|fish) ;;
        *) terminal=$cmd; break ;;
    esac
    pid=$(ps -o 'ppid=' -p $pid)
done
echo $terminal

Answer 10

Simple answer. Works for both console or ssh.

Example for simple character terminal:

ssh username@systemname
echo $TERM
dumb

tells you that you can't open GUI apps on that connection

Example for xterm (also works with PuTTY/Xming on Windows)

ssh -Y username@systemname      -- omit this if using PuTTY --
echo $TERM
xterm

means that you can use GUI commands like opening the leafpad editor or nautilus file manager.

On the console it is the same:

Open terminal window
echo $TERM
xterm