Arch Linux

DCengineer

Member

Registered: 2015-12-11

Posts: 15

Differentiating between multiple shells in a complex process

I plan on making a fairly major addition to the VirtualBox:Tips and tricks wiki page, but I have a formatting question. The process I am wanting to document (see the discussion page) involves multiple shell environments:

• Root and user shells on an existing Arch Linux installation

• Arch Linux installer shell in VirtualBox

• UEFI Shell in VirtualBox

Considering the fact that there are multiple shells that look very much alike, and that running commands in the wrong shell could result in irreparable damage to the system, I am wondering what the best way to differentiate between them in the wiki is.

Currently, I intend to use the standard formatting for the root and user shells, and I will use the formatting on the UEFI ArchWiki page for the UEFI shell. However, I am wondering if I should use a different format for the Arch installer shell running in a virtual machine. Should I use the full prompt, or just attempt to make it very clear that the installer should not be run directly in hardware?

Root shell:

#

User shell:

$

UEFI shell:

Shell> cd fs0:
FS0:>

Arch installer:

#
[root@archiso /]#
archiso #

Basically, I have two questions:

1. Should I show when the prompt changes in the UEFI shell?

2. Should I show the prompt (or a pseudo-prompt) for the Arch ISO in this case because running the commands as root on the installed system would result in total data loss?