NTFS directory coloring in terminal

[josteinaj]

I'm annoyed by the default coloring of NTFS directories in Ubuntu. Just watch:

(I believe the NTFS partition may have encryption enabled and the green background color symbolizes that the folder is encrypted?)

The screenshot is taken from a gnome-terminal running on my Ubuntu 7.10 laptop, ssh'ed into my desktop PC which has both a ntfs and a fat32/vfat partition on it. However the same colors appear when sshing in using PuTTY, or using gnome-terminal without sshing directly from the desktop computer.

So I guess it must be the "terminal-server" (if there is such a thing) on the Ubuntu 7.10 x64 desktop PC that defines the coloring scheme.

I want to remove the green background-color from the NTFS directories so it becomes readable. How do I do that?

[warp99]

I'm annoyed by the default coloring of NTFS directories in Ubuntu. Just watch:

(I believe the NTFS partition may have encryption enabled and the green background color symbolizes that the folder is encrypted?)

The screenshot is taken from a gnome-terminal running on my Ubuntu 7.10 laptop, ssh'ed into my desktop PC which has both a ntfs and a fat32/vfat partition on it. However the same colors appear when sshing in using PuTTY, or using gnome-terminal without sshing directly from the desktop computer.

So I guess it must be the "terminal-server" (if there is such a thing) on the Ubuntu 7.10 x64 desktop PC that defines the coloring scheme.

I want to remove the green background-color from the NTFS directories so it becomes readable. How do I do that?

You need to make changes to the dircolors command in your .bashrc script, but first you need to export the dircolors database to a file like this:

dircolors --print-database > ~/.mydircolors

then edit the file:

nano ~/.mydircolors

and change the colors to your preferences. Save the file then make changes to your .bashrc script. So you would:

nano ~/.bashrc

then locate the following portion:

# enable color support of ls and also add handy aliases
if [ "$TERM" != "dumb" ]; then
    eval "`dircolors -b`"
    alias ls='ls --color=auto'
    #alias dir='ls --color=auto --format=vertical'
    #alias vdir='ls --color=auto --format=long'
fi

and change the string:

"`dircolors -b`"

to

"`dircolors ~/.mydircolors`"

so when you login your bash script will change the defaults to your colors.

[josteinaj]

It worked. Thanks!


(It seems NTFS doesn't discriminate between "readable" and "executable", but that's another issue.)

[aodhan]

Thanks for that tip. It worked for me as well.

[andylinux]

If you got this to work, can you share your .mydircolors file? I can't seem to get the directory background highlighting turned off.

Thanks.

[andylinux]

I figured it out. Change the line in .mydircolors to this,

STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE 01;34 # dir that is sticky and other-writable (+t,o+w)
OTHER_WRITABLE 01;34 # dir that is other-writable (o+w) and not sticky

Problem solved.

[jt_04]

I figured it out. Change the line in .mydircolors to this,

STICKY_OTHER_WRITABLE 01;34 # dir that is sticky and other-writable (+t,o+w)
OTHER_WRITABLE 01;34 # dir that is other-writable (o+w) and not sticky

Problem solved.

thanks for that extra detail, that solved it. the details are rather important.

[atomics]

What does it mean when a directory is listed with a green background?

When I text copied from the terminal window into Gmail I don't get the colors. How do you copy the directory listing with colors?

Thanks in advance.

[rocuan]

Cool tip! Thanx