Tag Archives: ls

Strato-V-Server – Opensuse 13.1 – get colors for the "ls" shell command

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Today, I tried to work with a freshly installed Strato-V-Server. I had chosen Opensuse 13.1 (64 Bit) as the operative system. When I used the “ls” command I missed the standard coloring of directories and special files.

Using the “env” command and a comparison with a normal Opensuse 13.1 installation showed that required settings for the “ls” coloring were missing. SuSE normally adds these settings via a script “ls.bash” located in the directory “/etc/profile.d”. However, this file was missing on the Strato server. [The script in turn uses “/usr/bin/dircolors”, which existed on the system.]

You could compensate the lack of coloring by manually adding a line

ls –color=tty

to a local “.bashrc” file. However, this would only give you parts of the SuSE coloring scheme for your shell.

The missing file “ls.bash” is the result of a really minimum Opensuse 13.1 installation provided by Strato on their V-servers. It took me a while to find the right RPM package which installs the required files. It is the RPM aaa_base-extras.

After the installation of this package and a reopening of your shell “env” will show some additional lines that control the “ls” color settings: 

user@hxxxxxx:~> env | grep LS
LS_COLORS=no=00:fi=00:di=01;34:ln=00;36:pi=40;33:so=01;35:do=01;35:bd=40;33;01:cd=40;33;01:or=41;33;01:ex=00;32:*.cmd=00;32:*.exe=01;32:*.com=01;32:*.bat=01;32:*.btm=01;32:*.dll=01;32:*.tar=00;31:*.tbz=00;31:*.tgz=00;31:*.rpm=00;31:*.deb=00;31:*.arj=00;31:*.taz=00;31:*.lzh=00;31:*.lzma=00;31:*.zip=00;31:*.zoo=00;31:*.z=00;31:*.Z=00;31:*.gz=00;31:*.bz2=00;31:*.tb2=00;31:*.tz2=00;31:*.tbz2=00;31:*.xz=00;31:*.avi=01;35:*.bmp=01;35:*.fli=01;35:*.gif=01;35:*.jpg=01;35:*.jpeg=01;35:*.mng=01;35:*.mov=01;35:*.mpg=01;35:*.pcx=01;35:*.pbm=01;35:*.pgm=01;35:*.png=01;35:*.ppm=01;35:*.tga=01;35:*.tif=01;35:*.xbm=01;35:*.xpm=01;35:*.dl=01;35:*.gl=01;35:*.wmv=01;35:*.aiff=00;32:*.au=00;32:*.mid=00;32:*.mp3=00;32:*.ogg=00;32:*.voc=00;32:*.wav=00;32:
...
...
LS_OPTIONS=-N --color=tty -T 0
user@hxxxxxx:~>

I hope this information will help others who miss the the usual “ls”-coloring on Strato-V-servers, too.