/Guides/FreeBSD/Misc/

General Information

Ever wanted an easy way to distinguish directories and executables from everything else while you're ssh'ed in to your FreeBSD box?  You may have seen colors using ls on some Linux distros such as SlackWare but now you can have it on your FreeBSD machine.

Requirements

1. Local root access on the box or be able to su to root.
   
2. A SSH client that supports ANSI colors such as puTTy or SecureCRT.
   
3. Your favorite text editor (I prefer nano).

Installation

Note:  This only works if your shell is bash.

Logon to the machine as root or su to root.

# # # # #

cd /usr/ports/misc/gnuls make install make clean cd /etc nano profile

Add the following:

alias ls="gnuls --color=always"

Log out and back in and enjoy.

Author: Kyle Symonds
ksymonds at gmail dot com

You should probably modify ~/.profile as /etc/profile impacts all users. Also, no need to log out; just . or source ~/.profile

I can't find the gnuls port.

#whereis gnlus
gnlus:
#

Try using gnuls instead of gnlus.  =)  The path is also mentioned in the above steps.

You do know about 'ls -G', right? Stock FreeBSD command which will colorize its output in a color-enabled terminal. man ls(1).

Yes, but it doesn't look anywhere as pretty as gnuls does.  =)

If you use this in /etc/profile
alias ls='gnuls -hfAC --color=auto'

Then if you use putty or other clients, you will be able to see the colours as well.

OpenBSD 3.7
The executable has been renamed in gnuls-4.1p0.tgz
alias ls='gls --color=always'

I like:
alias ls='gls -lah --color=always'

If you use csh or tcsh on FreeBSD you can put 'setenv CLICOLOR' in /etc/csh.cshrc or ~/.cshrc for color.

If you installed tcsh on a Linux system such as Redhat you can add something like this to the cshrc file:

alias ls        ls --color=auto
alias la        ls -a --color=auto
alias lf        ls -FA --color=auto
alias ll        ls -lAh --color=auto

Could /ports directory be under some other folders??

I cannot find it!
It is not under /usr and I do not know how to use the find command properly in OpenBSD!

I am used to Debian/Ubuntu kind of linux where you can do a find -name ports.
In BSD I used find -f / ports and it found every file and to control c out of it...

Any help would be appreciated.

Regards;
med