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Latest revision as of 21:58, 13 May 2020
When working with Linux remotely over ssh it's sometimes nice to be able to work with a different colour scheme (or color scheme as some write). With ssh clients like Putty it's easy to change the foreground and background colours of the characters, but Linux supports different colours for different types of data; sometimes based on the file extension, sometimes based on functionality (e.g. directory names, command prompt, current working directory, bold text, links, etc..).
Below are listed the most commonly used colour sets and some instructions on how to change them.
change bash prompt colours
The bash prompt can show colors for username, hostname and current working directory.
The colours as well as the components that determine what the prompt should contain are all set in the PS1 environment variable.
The PS1 string is usually set in ~/.bashrc and can look something like this:
PS1='${debian_chroot:+($debian_chroot)}\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w\[\033[00m\]\$ '
Pay attention at the part \u@\h it is saying "user@host" and the number before it \[\033[01;32m\] indicates the color. This is what needs changing if you want a different colour.
The \u and \h are the username and hostname, but there are more:
\u username \h system host name \w current (working) directory \$ show a # if the effective UID is 0 (i.e. root user), otherwise display a $ \a unknown \@ time in 12-hour am/pm format
The full PS1 string looks quite complicated, but here is it broken up into the various pieces:
Set a colour and display the username, @-sign and hostname
\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h
Remove any colour codes (use the terminal default) and display the ':' sign
\[\033[00m\]:
Set a colour and display the current working directory
\[\033[01;34m\]\w
Once again disable any colour codes and display just the '$' sign
\[\033[00m\]\$
The actual colour is defined by the semicolon-separated number pair that is inside the inner square brackets (e.g. '01;32'). All the extra stuff is just escape characters and color-begin and color-end markers.
The colors numbers are:
Black 0;30 Dark Gray 1;30 Blue 0;34 Light Blue 1;34 Green 0;32 Light Green 1;32 Cyan 0;36 Light Cyan 1;36 Red 0;31 Light Red 1;31 Purple 0;35 Light Purple 1;35 Brown 0;33 Yellow 1;33 Light Gray 0;37 White 1;37
change manpage colors
When man pages are viewed, they are piped through a program called 'less', which offers page navigation and search capabilities of the man-page text.
The idea is to override the colour settings that less uses.
edit and add the following lines to ~/.bashrc to load up the new colourscheme.
export LESS_TERMCAP_mb=$(printf '\e[01;31m') # enter blinking mode - red export LESS_TERMCAP_md=$(printf '\e[01;35m') # enter double-bright mode - bold, magenta export LESS_TERMCAP_me=$(printf '\e[0m') # turn off all appearance modes (mb, md, so, us) export LESS_TERMCAP_se=$(printf '\e[0m') # leave standout mode export LESS_TERMCAP_so=$(printf '\e[01;33m') # enter standout mode - yellow export LESS_TERMCAP_ue=$(printf '\e[0m') # leave underline mode export LESS_TERMCAP_us=$(printf '\e[04;36m') # enter underline mode - cyan
The color codes are as follows:
30 – black 31 – red 32 – green 33 – orange 34 – blue 35 – magenta 36 – cyan 37 – white
Some other escape codes which you could use include:
0 – reset/normal 1 – bold 3 – italic/reversed 4 – underlined 5 – blink
change vi (vim) colours
The vi editor has a range of color schemes available that are defined in /usr/share/vim/vim74/colors/
Adding:
colo blue
..to ~/.vimrc will use the 'blue' colorscheme. Other options are:
darkblue default delek desert elflord evening industry koehler morning murphy pablo peachpuff ron shine slate torte zellner
You could of course also type: 'colo blue' on the vi status line to immediately change to it.
The status line is what appears after you press the <ESCAPE> key and type a : (the colon symbol)
Add the following line to your ~/.vimrc to change the bottom line text color (that shows the edit mode, INSERT or REPLACE):
hi ModeMsg term=bold ctermfg=2 gui=bold guifg=SeaGreen
When 'su' -ing into another account, the .vimrc of that su account will override the .vimrc from the account you were coming from.
More options:
hi LineNr ctermfg=grey guifg=grey hi Statement ctermfg=black guifg=black hi Identifier ctermfg=darkGreen guifg=darkGreen hi Comment term=bold ctermfg=4 guifg=#406090 hi Constant term=underline ctermfg=Red guifg=#c00058 hi Special term=bold ctermfg=Blue guifg=SlateBlue hi Identifier term=underline ctermfg=Black guifg=Black hi Statement term=bold ctermfg=Brown gui=bold guifg=Brown hi PreProc term=underline ctermfg=Magenta guifg=Magenta3 hi Type term=underline ctermfg=Green gui=bold guifg=SeaGreen hi Ignore cterm=bold ctermfg=7 guifg=bg hi Error term=reverse cterm=bold ctermfg=7 ctermbg=1 gui=bold guifg=White guibg=Red hi Todo term=standout ctermfg=0 ctermbg=3 guifg=Blue guibg=Yellow
To see all the available (and currently configured color schemes) type the following:
hi
Lastly, vim has been configured on some systems to support Syntax Highlighting. Some find this fantastic, others find this annoying. To turn it off, type 'syntax off' on the status line or include it in your .vimrc file.
change directory and file type colours
In some cases you may want to change the file type colours that appear when viewing a directory listing in Linux.
Normally, directories are dark blue, .gz files are red, executables are green, etc..
The colours are managed by the LS_COLORS environment variable which can be easily modified with the utility 'dircolors'.
Step 1 – Copy the current LS_COLORS to a file in your home folder.
dircolors > ~/.dir_colors
Step 2 – Edit the files to make whatever changes you require.
vi ~/.dir_colors
Step 3 – load the new color scheme whenever a shell starts
echo ". ~/.dir_colors" >> ~/.bashrc
NOTE: when using 'su' the color scheme is inherited from the user you were logged in as. So if the colours while in 'su' are not to your liking, you need to change the dircolors scheme for the pre-su-user, not root.
You will notice that the LS_COLORS variable contains many definitions. The dircolors utility has a way of displaying the colour definitions a bit nicer:
dircolors --print-database
The first number is the style (1=bold), followed by a semicolon, and then the actual number of the color, possible styles are:
0 = default colour 1 = bold 4 = underlined 5 = flashing text 7 = reverse field 40 = black background 41 = red background 42 = green background 43 = orange background 44 = blue background 45 = purple background 46 = cyan background 47 = grey background 100 = dark grey background 101 = light red background 102 = light green background 103 = yellow background 104 = light blue background 105 = light purple background 106 = turquoise background
All possible colors:
31 = red 32 = green 33 = orange 34 = blue 35 = purple 36 = cyan 37 = grey 90 = dark grey 91 = light red 92 = light green 93 = yellow 94 = light blue 95 = light purple 96 = turquoise
These can even be combined, so that a parameter like:
di=1;4;31;42
in your LS_COLORS variable would make directories appear in bold underlined red text with a green background!
You can also change other kinds of files when using the ls command by defining each kind with:
di = directory fi = file ln = symbolic link pi = fifo file so = socket file bd = block (buffered) special file cd = character (unbuffered) special file or = symbolic link pointing to a non-existent file (orphan) mi = non-existent file pointed to by a symbolic link (visible when you type ls -l) ex = file which is executable (ie. has 'x' set in permissions). *.rpm = files with the ending .rpm
After you alter your .bashrc file, to put the changes in effect you will have to restart your shell.