Why does "(base)" appear in front of my terminal prompt?

I'm wondering why I have (base) on the left of my terminal prompt.

If I run source ~/.profile in the terminal, it disappears.

If I close that terminal and reopen a new terminal, (base) is there again.

I'd like to know what it is.

Here's the content of my .profile (excluding standard $path stuff and other personalized things):

# if running bash
if [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ]; then # include .bashrc if it exists if [ -f "$HOME/.bashrc" ]; then . "$HOME/.bashrc" fi
fi

Here's the content of my .bashrc

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
case $- in *i*) ;; *) return;;
esac
# don't put duplicate lines or lines starting with space in the history.
# See bash(1) for more options
HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth
# append to the history file, don't overwrite it
shopt -s histappend
# for setting history length see HISTSIZE and HISTFILESIZE in bash(1)
HISTSIZE=1000
HISTFILESIZE=2000
# check the window size after each command and, if necessary,
# update the values of LINES and COLUMNS.
shopt -s checkwinsize
# If set, the pattern "**" used in a pathname expansion context will
# match all files and zero or more directories and subdirectories.
#shopt -s globstar
# make less more friendly for non-text input files, see lesspipe(1)
[ -x /usr/bin/lesspipe ] && eval "$(SHELL=/bin/sh lesspipe)"
# set variable identifying the chroot you work in (used in the prompt below)
if [ -z "${debian_chroot:-}" ] && [ -r /etc/debian_chroot ]; then debian_chroot=$(cat /etc/debian_chroot)
fi
# set a fancy prompt (non-color, unless we know we "want" color)
case "$TERM" in xterm-color|*-256color) color_prompt=yes;;
esac
# uncomment for a colored prompt, if the terminal has the capability; turned
# off by default to not distract the user: the focus in a terminal window
# should be on the output of commands, not on the prompt
#force_color_prompt=yes
if [ -n "$force_color_prompt" ]; then if [ -x /usr/bin/tput ] && tput setaf 1 >&/dev/null; then # We have color support; assume it's compliant with Ecma-48 # (ISO/IEC-6429). (Lack of such support is extremely rare, and such # a case would tend to support setf rather than setaf.) color_prompt=yes else color_prompt= fi
fi
if [ "$color_prompt" = yes ]; then PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '
else PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h:\w\$ '
fi
unset color_prompt force_color_prompt
# If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir
case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*) PS1="\[\e]0;${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\u@\h: \w\a\]$PS1" ;;
*) ;;
esac
# enable color support of ls and also add handy aliases
if [ -x /usr/bin/dircolors ]; then test -r ~/.dircolors && eval "$(dircolors -b ~/.dircolors)" || eval "$(dircolors -b)" alias ls='ls --color=auto' #alias dir='dir --color=auto' #alias vdir='vdir --color=auto' alias grep='grep --color=auto' alias fgrep='fgrep --color=auto' alias egrep='egrep --color=auto'
fi
# colored GCC warnings and errors
#export GCC_COLORS='error=01;31:warning=01;35:note=01;36:caret=01;32:locus=01:quote=01'
# some more ls aliases
alias ll='ls -alF'
alias la='ls -A'
alias l='ls -CF'
# Add an "alert" alias for long running commands. Use like so:
# sleep 10; alert
alias alert='notify-send --urgency=low -i "$([ $? = 0 ] && echo terminal || echo error)" "$(history|tail -n1|sed -e '\''s/^\s*[0-9]\+\s*//;s/[;&|]\s*alert$//'\'')"'
# Alias definitions.
# You may want to put all your additions into a separate file like
# ~/.bash_aliases, instead of adding them here directly.
# See /usr/share/doc/bash-doc/examples in the bash-doc package.
if [ -f ~/.bash_aliases ]; then . ~/.bash_aliases
fi
# enable programmable completion features (you don't need to enable
# this, if it's already enabled in /etc/bash.bashrc and /etc/profile
# sources /etc/bash.bashrc).
if ! shopt -oq posix; then if [ -f /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then . /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion elif [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then . /etc/bash_completion fi
fi
# added by Anaconda3 installer
#export PATH="/home/jim/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"
. /home/jim/anaconda3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh
conda activate

0

7 Answers

This can also be because auto_activate_base is set to True. You can check this using the following command

conda config --show | grep auto_activate_base

To set it false

conda config --set auto_activate_base False
source ~/.bashrc

To reactivate set it to True

conda config --set auto_activate_base True
source ~/.bashrc

10

This appears to come from your conda environment. In particular, you are activating conda from your ~/.bashrc as follows

# added by Anaconda3 installer
#export PATH="/home/jim/anaconda3/bin:$PATH"
. /home/jim/anaconda3/etc/profile.d/conda.sh
conda activate

and conda activate prepends your prompt with (<env-name->) - because you are not specifying a particular environment, that defaults to (base).

The behavior is documented at Using the .condarc conda configuration file:

Change command prompt (changeps1)

When using activate, change the command prompt from $PS1 to include the activated environment. The default is True.

EXAMPLE:

changeps1: False

So to make it go away, either find and modify your .condarc file - or don't activate conda from your ~/.bashrc file.

3

(base) appears due to change in conda environment.

The following command hides (base) environment.

conda config --set changeps1 False

2

To deactivate a conda environment, enter:

conda deactivate

This will remove the (base) before your Linux prompt, as seen here:

from your $HOME directoryecho "changeps1: False" >> .condarc

ran the code below then entered conda deactivate and the base went away.

echo >&2 "DeprecationWarning: 'source deactivate' is deprecated. Use 'conda deactivate'."
"$_CONDA_ROOT/etc/profile.d/conda.sh" || return $?

conda deactivate

It appears to still be an experimental feature of Anaconda.

To revert it back to normal you can run the command:

conda init --reverse

Then you need to close the current shell window and open a new one to see the modifications.