Minimal .zshrc for remote servers

08 Jan 2025

Recently, I found myself connecting to remote machines quite often. I have to debug remote servers for work or connect through ssh to an emulation handheld console I just bought (more posts coming on that later).

But I've configured my local zsh so much that when I connect to a bare remote server I feel a bit lost. No colors to differentiate folders and files. No tabbing through completion. Even simple things like backspace or delete key do not always work.

So this time, I built a very minimal .zshrc that I intend to scp to a remote server whenever I need to do some work there, just to make my life easier. I tried it on the aforementioned console, and it helped a lot, so I'm gonna share it here.

Fix the keyboard

export TERM=xterm-256color
bindkey "^[[3~" delete-char            # Delete
bindkey "^?" backward-delete-char # Backspace
bindkey "^[OH" beginning-of-line  # Start of line
bindkey "^[OF" end-of-line             # End of line

Starting with the basics, I ensure my terminal type is set to xterm-256color. It should fix most keyboard issues. But just to be sure I actually did define the keycodes for delete, backspace as well as start and end of line.

The ^[ and ^? chars here are not real characters, but escape characters. In vim, you have to press Ctrl-V, followed by the actual key (so, backspace, or delete, etc) to input it correctly. I found that various servers had this mapped differently, so you might have to manually change it if it doesn't work for you.

Completion

autoload -Uz compinit
compinit
zstyle ':completion:*' menu select

This will enable a much better completion than the default one. Now, whenever there are several possible solutions when pressing tab, the list of possibilities will be displayed, and you can tab through them as they are getting highlighted.

Colors

autoload -U colors && colors
export COLOR_GREEN=2
export COLOR_PURPLE=21
export COLOR_BLUE=94
export LS_COLORS="di=38;5;${COLOR_GREEN}:ow=38;5;${COLOR_GREEN}:ex=4;38;5;${COLOR_PURPLE}:ln=34;4;${COLOR_BLUE}"
zstyle ':completion:*' list-colors ${(s.:.)LS_COLORS}

I then added a bit of color. I defined a few variables to better reference the colors. Those are mapped based on the color palette I'm using in my local kitty. They would probably be different on your machine, so you should also adapt it.

The LS_COLORS definition sets the directories in green, executable files in purple and symlinks in blue. This simple change already makes everything much easier to grok. The zstyle line also applies those colors to the tab completions \o/.

Aliases

alias v='vi'
alias ls='ls -lhN --color=auto'
alias la='ls -lahN --color=auto'
alias ..='cd ..'
function f() {
        find . -name "*$1*" | sed 's|^./||'
}

I added some very minimal aliases; those that are embedded in my muscle memory. I have much more locally, but I went for the minimal amount of aliases to make me feel at home. I also didn't want to have to install any third party (even if exa, fd and bat would sure would have been nice).

v is twice as fast to type as vi. Some better ls and la (for hidden files). A quick way to move back one level in the tree structure, and a short alias to find files based on a pattern. Those are simple, but very effective.

Prompt

PS1="[%m] %{[38;5;${COLOR_GREEN}m%}%~/%{[00m%} "

And finally a left-side prompt to give more information of where I am. It starts with the name of the current machine, so I can easily spot if I'm on a remote session or locally, then the current directory (in green, once again, as is my rule for directories).

The wrapping %{ and %} are needed around color espace sequences, to tell zsh that what's inside doesn't take any space on the screen. If you omit them, you'll see that what you type is offset on the right by a large amount.

I actually like to replace the %m with a machine-specific prefix, to more easily see where I am.

Here, for example, you can see I'm connected to my handheld console (I added the SNES-like colored button), currently in the /roms2/ directory and I'm tabbing through completions in the ./n64/games/ folder.

And that's it. A very minimal .zshrc for when I need to get my bearings on a new remote server and still be able to do what I want quickly.

Want to add something ? Feel free to get in touch on Twitter : @pixelastic

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