A.P. Lawrence

This article is from a FAQ concerning SCO operating systems. While some of the information may be applicable to any OS, or any Unix or Linux OS, it may be specific to SCO Xenix, Open Desktop or Openserver.

There is lots of Linux, Mac OS X and general Unix info elsewhere on this site: Search this site is the best way to find anything.

TCP/IP and NFS FAQ

I've telnetted to a linux machine, and the automatic colors for commands like ls and vi have made it impossible to see what I type.

If you have access to the linux box command line, see Controlling Linux colors in vi (vim)

Immediate fix: Type your telnet escape character (probably CTRL-] ) and then type:

 !setcolor -n

You should also be able to do "unalias ls" to shut this off.

Or, before telnetting from a SCO console, run

vidi vm80x25

That shuts off color and about the worst you will get is bold characters. Remember- you do the vidi on the SCO side BEFORE you telnet or ssh to Linux.

Put it back to normal with

vidi v80x25

Another trick is to have previously done:

setcolor -n > resetc

on the SCO box. Transfer that "resetc" file to Linux, and when things become ugly, "cat resetc" will restore colors.

If you are using ssh, and have started from a job-control shell, you are supposed to be able to type ~ followed by CTRL-Z to suspend back to your original shell. This works fine on some systems, but not with my ORS5 box when logged in as "root"- I get back to my starting point all right, but then "fg" lists no jobs. Hoewever, using ksh as any other user, this works fine.

Comments /SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec4linuxcolors.html


Add your comments

Why no "Digg this!" etc.?

Phone and Email Support at Monthly rates

Enter your email address for automatic notification of new posts here
(be sure to whitelist 'feedburner.com' if you use spam filtering)

/SCOFAQ/FAQ_scotec4linuxcolors.html copyright 1997-2003 (various) All Rights Reserved

Have you tried Searching this site?

Unix/Linux/Mac OS X support by phone, email or on-site: Support Rates

This is a Unix/Linux resource website. It contains technical articles about Unix, Linux and general computing related subjects, opinion, news, help files, how-to's, tutorials and more. We appreciate comments and article submissions.

Publishing your articles here