As one switches from one system to another any mistake can have ugly impact especially when dealing with production issues under stress.  A simple “rm” command or “sql drop table on fact” from Vertica vsql, say, can create havoc.   I understand that you can put many checks in place including have appropriate access, aliases (rm=’rm -i’, for example), set prompts (PS1, PS2..) with hostname, color, etc.  But it is also possible to override alias or unalias to delete bunch of files with run “rm -f”.  

With many checks in place, one thing that I always prefer is having the background of the terminal color set based on hostname or system type – dev, production, etc.  On Mac I use following script and name it something like ssh2 and set the $PATH (bash) and have alias for many of these systems like

alias sshProdBox1=’ssh2 shiva@productionBox1.anywhere.com’

Script uses bash shell and AppleScript (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AppleScript and https://developer.apple.com/library/mac/documentation/AppleScript/Conceptual/AppleScriptX/AppleScriptX.html and http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/AppleScript_Programming ) on Mac.

On connecting to remote box background color is appropriately set – red  for production, light blue for QA,  gray for Dev, etc.  and on disconnecting terminal is reverted back to white fonts with black background. 

#!/bin/bash                                                                                                                                              
# Local window font is white on black background.  On exiting from any ssh reset the terminal window to this config (white fonts on black screen).

HOSTNAME=`echo $@ | sed s/.*@//`
# echo $HOSTNAME, $@
if [ ${HOSTNAME} ]; then
    echo “ssh to $HOSTNAME”
else
    echo “Missing ssh host. Exiting.”
    exit 1
fi

set_bg_color () {
    # color values are in ‘{R, G, B, A}’ format, all 16-bit unsigned integers (0-65535)
    osascript -e “tell application \”Terminal\” to set background color of window 1 to $1″
}

set_font_color () {
    osascript -e “tell application \”Terminal\” ” \
              -e    “tell selected tab of front window” \
              -e        “set normal text color to $1” \
              -e    “end tell” \
              -e “end tell”
}

# On exit from connecting revert back to local setting – white fonts on black background
on_exit () {
    set_bg_color   “{0, 0, 0, 50000}”                            # Black bg
    set_font_color “{65000, 65000, 65000, 50000}”   # White font
}
trap on_exit EXIT

# Main
case $HOSTNAME in

    # My dev with white fonts on dark gray)
        set_bg_color    “{15000, 15000, 15000, 50000}”
        ;;

….

….

esac

Remote dev box:

Remote production box:

Remote qa box: