[ulty]

I used to use slackware, and the default terminal was color, i.e. when you ran the ls command file names would be colored differently if they were normal files, or executable, or links, etc. I found this very nice. I run Redhat 6.0 now, and after reading a lot of man pages and documentation, I'm not sure how to get this color feature enabled.

[MikeV]

Actually, I don't think that this is based on your terminal of choice. It's based on your configuration file for bash, your shell. There's actually a few, /etc/profile, /etc/bashrc/, ~/.bash_profile, and ~/.bashrc. We'll concentrate on ~/.bashrc...

Depending on what window manager you use (KDE, Gnome, etc.) you may also have a configuration script for them, too, but we won't worry about them. If you edit your .bashrc, it will affect every window manager, and command line, for that user. All you have to do is add an alias line to your .bashrc...

An alias will do exactly what it sounds like. Make one command do something else. Basically, it makes it easy to do stuff, so you dont' have to do commands with 142 switches on them. The command you want to use is <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">code:</font><HR><pre>ls -aF --color[/code] which would be a pain to type every time you want to list a directory. So, to change the command, you can open a terminal and type <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">code:</font><HR><pre><home/mikev/>#alias ls="ls -aF --color"[/code] which will fool the computer into thinking that the ls command is really the other command with the switches.

To make this a permanent change, just add the alias line to the end of your ~/.bashrc file.

(By the way, the ~ means 'your home directory" so ~/.bashrc would be /home/yourname/.bashrc)

Let me know if this helps!

-M

------------------
It is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Linux: The Ultimate NT Service Pack

[ulty]

Thanks for the reply. Actually, a few hours before I read it, I took a look at the Tips HOWTO and it had the alias ls trick in there, and I'm happy to report it worked well, and I can now see those purty colors.

[MikeV]

Cool!!! Glad you got it taken care of.

BTW, since I'm usually pretty busy and don't have time to cruise the boards much, feel free to email me if you like... you'll probably get much quicker responses that way.

-M

------------------
It is easier to get forgiveness than it is to get permission.

Linux: The Ultimate NT Service Pack