New to FreeBSD - want my colours back 1

[greadey]

Hi peeps,

I have just installed FreeBSD 4.4. on my PC alongside Debian GNU/Linux. After a 4 hour install session, and a few changes to my lilo.conf, the BSD was up and running with absolutely no problems at all. I was surprised . Anyway I changed my default shell to Bash and tried a;

ls --color.

Which didn't produce the colour coded file type information as expected. Is this a quirk of BSD or is there something basic I have missed that I can do to get my console colours back?

Thanks

greadey

 

[rycamor]

In FreeBSD, you have to install 'gnuls', and then alias it to 'ls'. Gnuls can be called with the --color option. If you aren't familiar with the FreeBSD ports system, you should read up on it a little bit, but basically all you have to do is:

(assuming you chose to install the 'ports tree')
cd /usr/ports/misc/gnuls/
su
make
make install

'make' will automatically download the sources, apply patches and compile the application, then 'make install' will ... install it. About as easy as a package manager can get, if you ask me.

Welcome to FreeBSD. -------------------

Current reading --

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25456

 

[greadey]

Thanks rycamor, sorted that one out.
I was trawling through the file system and found /usr/compat/linux/* with lots of linux compatible binaries. I then remembered installing these - doh!

Anyway the version of ls amoungst this lot is the gnu colourised version. I wonder why this can't be slapped into /bin instead of the BSD version. Still, it doesn't matter really.

 

[rycamor]

Well, y'know... The FreeBSD people have to have their way of doing things ;-). It's just like the reason the British still drive on the other side of the road. 'We're not going to let the upstarts show us how to do things'.

But anyway, once you realize how FreeBSD is put together, it's easy to customize your environment any way you want.

Another tip: in Linux you are probably used to 'mc' for Midnight Commander. In FreeBSD, you have to install it from '/usr/ports/misc/mc', but the executable is always called 'midc', instead of 'mc'. Go figure.

Anyway, the point of FreeBSD is not ease of use for a user experience, but a rock-solid server, which it definitely is. -------------------

Current reading --

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=25456

 

[greadey]

Thanks Rycamor,

What can I say, you are absolutely right. I even thought to myself that I should try and do things the BSD way and thus changed my default shell back to tsch. As for midnight commander I was wondering about that.

regards,

greadey