Using 4.2 on my new PC the colors are just way to dark. I prepfer working with a blackground and doing a simple ls -al displays the directories in dark blue. That drak blue on a black background is just too dark for my old man eyes.

Any ideas? Of course I'd like to lighten all the text colors but that's the one I really can't read.

[size=1][ January 17, 2006, 07:33 PM: Message edited by: Brian T. Pence ][/size]

If you're using bourne shell, try the following command:

eval `dircolors -b`

(notice the backticks, not single-quotes)

The dircolors command outputs a string that when executed by the 'eval', assigns some default values to the LS_COLORS environment variable. Future calls to the 'ls' command will use the LS_COLORS variable pick the colors to display.

dircolors defaults look pretty good on a black background. It's what I use. If this works, add the eval `dircolors -b` to your login scripts. You might need some slightly different syntax if you're using a shell other than bourne.

If you want more detailed control, you'll have to create and modify a config file for dircolors. Like this:

To create a dircolors config file named '.dircolors', execute the following:

dircolors --print-database > .dircolors

Now, modify the .dircolors file to suit your needs. All colors come in a dim and bold (bright) version. For example, for your directory, 00;34 is dim(00) blue(34). 01;34 would be bright(01) blue(34). The default config file generated by the above command is pretty well commented and descriptive about how to make your own changes.

Once you've modified the .dircolors file, you can use this command instead of the original 'eval' command above to load the colors from the .dircolors file and set the LS_COLORS variable:

eval `dircolors -b .dircolors`

Hope this helps