TERMINAL_COLORS.D(5) | terminal-colors.d | TERMINAL_COLORS.D(5) |
terminal-colors.d - Configure output colorization for various utilities
/etc/terminal-colors.d/[[name][@term].][type]
Files in this directory determine the default behavior for utilities when coloring output.
The name is a utility name. The name is optional and when none is specified then the file is used for all unspecified utilities.
The term is a terminal identifier (the TERM environment variable). The terminal identifier is optional and when none is specified then the file is used for all unspecified terminals.
The type is a file type. Supported file types are:
If there are more files that match for a utility, then the file with the more specific filename wins. For example, the filename "@xterm.scheme" has less priority than "dmesg@xterm.scheme". The lowest priority are those files without a utility name and terminal identifier (e.g., "disable").
The user-specific $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d or $HOME/.config/terminal-colors.d overrides the global setting.
The following statement is recognized:
The name is a logical name of color sequence (for example "error"). The names are specific to the utilities. For more details always see the COLORS section in the man page for the utility.
The color-sequence is a color name, ASCII color sequences or escape sequences.
black, blink, blue, bold, brown, cyan, darkgray, gray, green, halfbright, lightblue, lightcyan, lightgray, lightgreen, lightmagenta, lightred, magenta, red, reset, reverse, and yellow.
The color sequences are composed of sequences of numbers separated by semicolons. The most common codes are:
0 | to restore default color |
1 | for brighter colors |
4 | for underlined text |
5 | for flashing text |
30 | for black foreground |
31 | for red foreground |
32 | for green foreground |
33 | for yellow (or brown) foreground |
34 | for blue foreground |
35 | for purple foreground |
36 | for cyan foreground |
37 | for white (or gray) foreground |
40 | for black background |
41 | for red background |
42 | for green background |
43 | for yellow (or brown) background |
44 | for blue background |
45 | for purple background |
46 | for cyan background |
47 | for white (or gray) background |
To specify control or blank characters in the color sequences, C-style \-escaped notation can be used:
\a | Bell (ASCII 7) |
\b | Backspace (ASCII 8) |
\e | Escape (ASCII 27) |
\f | Form feed (ASCII 12) |
\n | Newline (ASCII 10) |
\r | Carriage Return (ASCII 13) |
\t | Tab (ASCII 9) |
\v | Vertical Tab (ASCII 11) |
\? | Delete (ASCII 127) |
\_ | Space |
\\ | Backslash (\) |
\^ | Caret (^) |
\# | Hash mark (#) |
Please note that escapes are necessary to enter a space, backslash, caret, or any control character anywhere in the string, as well as a hash mark as the first character.
For example, to use a red background for alert messages in the output of dmesg(1), use:
Lines where the first non-blank character is a # (hash) are ignored. Any other use of the hash character is not interpreted as introducing a comment.
$XDG_CONFIG_HOME/terminal-colors.d
$HOME/.config/terminal-colors.d
/etc/terminal-colors.d
Disable colors for all compatible utilities:
Disable colors for all compatible utils on a vt100 terminal:
Disable colors for all compatible utils except dmesg(1):
touch /etc/terminal-colors.d/dmesg.enable
The terminal-colors.d functionality is currently supported by all util-linux utilities which provides colorized output. For more details always see the COLORS section in the man page for the utility.
terminal-colors.d is part of the util-linux package and is available from Linux Kernel Archive.
January 2014 | util-linux |