Terminal, color ls and ssh

If I'm understanding your post correctly, you used to have color when ssh'ing to linux, but not locally on the Mac. And putting the two exports in your profile switched it around so the ssh to linux doesn't have color now, but locally on the Mac it does. Correct?

If that's the case, try aliasing ls to 'ls -G', that's what I've done on my Mac and I get color just fine. It also shouldn't interfere with ssh sessions or anything. Just put:

alias ls='ls -G'

in your .bash_profile and remove the two exports. Hopefully that will work for you!

Macbook Pro 2.0 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Hmm, that's odd. Did you change your terminal type to vt100, or was that the default? (I'm not at my Mac so I can't check mine unfortunately).

Macbook Pro 2.0 GHz Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Jscottyk,


after you've ssh'ed in to the linux box. what is the terminal type being used? if you don't know. 'echo $TERM'.

And does the system support that terminal type?

infocmp $TERM

should dump out the terminal type configuration information. does it have a
"colors" setting. If it doesn't, save the output from terminfo, run on the mac, for the the terminal type that supports colors to a file. move it to the linux
box, and run

tic <filename>

wherei <filename> is the file that you saved the output from infocmp from.
and if you lucking it will create it with out problem. the next step is to try logging in from another Terminal.app window, to see if that clears up the problem. you probably wont have to resort to this, as linux usually has quite
a few terminal types by default. but if you do have to, note where the file is written too, incase you have to manually delete it. this can be found from looking at the terminfo manpage.

see terminfo(5) under Color Handling

Andy

Message was edited by: Nils C. Anderson

I have the following in my .bash_profile file and it works:
LS_COLORS='.png=01;35:.tex=01;35:';
export LS_COLORS
alias ls="ls --color=auto"
alias ll="ls -l"
Define LS_COLORS according to your needs.
Mihalis.

Hi Mihalis,
I think that you must have installed GNU's "ls" utility. Apple's BSD version doesn't support the "--color=auto" switch.

Hi jscottyk,
Your Linux distro must be pretty brain-dead if it doesn't support xterm-color; mine does. Does it have a /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-color or some comparable terminfo file or termcap entry? Anyway, xterm should work so you can certainly use that if it does work.
--
Gary
~~~~
Humor in the Court:
Q. And lastly, Gary, all your responses must be oral.
O.K.? What school do you go to?
A. Oral.
Q. How old are you?
A. Oral.

You are right Gary.
I am using the fink version of ls.

Mihalis.

Hi Mihalis,
Yeah, I've got Fink's coreutils too. I think it's a recent dependency of one of the packages I have installed. When, after five years, they finally got shellutils to compile on OS X, I think they felt some "need" to use it. I've always liked GNU utilities but some BSD utilities stand out and Apple has changed some in ways that make them indispensable. The new versions that respect resource forks are among those. Also, Apple's "ls" utility has a switch that causes it to list ACLs and Apple's chmod can edit ACLs so they're indispensable.
--
Gary
~~~~
If you think before you speak the other guy gets his joke
in first.