Subject: Linux Console Colors
Date: 2006-03-22 18:00:00
Tags: linux, console
Text-Type: markdown

What you say?

Yeah, I'm talking about coloring the 'linux console' - the little thing that you
get when you login without X.

Most people I know use a framebuffer.  That's due to the fact that
non-framebuffered text is huge by default.  Typically, you'll set vga=791 or
something, and the text gets more readable, and it's left at that.

Yes, some people out there prefer bootsplash/gensplash/usplash/wtf-splash... I
don't (though I do use grub-gfx from the AUR - grub with the background pixmap
patch).  However, when one boots into a framebuffer mode, you typically chose a
color depth (personally, my laptop doesn't like anything over 16bit color, but
that's good enough for me).

Ok, so I'm sure some people have asked "well, if I'm not using a splash screen,
what use is all this color depth malarky?" - I'll show you. My
[~/.bashrc](http://phraktured.net/config/.bashrc) contains the following lines:

    if [ "$TERM" = "linux" ]; then
        echo -en "\e]P0222222" #black
        echo -en "\e]P8222222" #darkgrey
        echo -en "\e]P1803232" #darkred
        echo -en "\e]P9982b2b" #red
        echo -en "\e]P25b762f" #darkgreen
        echo -en "\e]PA89b83f" #green
        echo -en "\e]P3aa9943" #brown
        echo -en "\e]PBefef60" #yellow
        echo -en "\e]P4324c80" #darkblue
        echo -en "\e]PC2b4f98" #blue
        echo -en "\e]P5706c9a" #darkmagenta
        echo -en "\e]PD826ab1" #magenta
        echo -en "\e]P692b19e" #darkcyan
        echo -en "\e]PEa1cdcd" #cyan
        echo -en "\e]P7ffffff" #lightgrey
        echo -en "\e]PFdedede" #white
        clear #for background artifacting
    fi

Yeah, it's confusing, I know... however, these are console escapes specific to
the linux console.

As with all escape codes, it begins with a little prefix
indicating what the escape is actually doing: in this case "\e]P", which is the
"set color" escape. The format for the data is "XRRGGBB" where X is the
number of the color to modify (in hex).  This is a standard 16 color notation,
which I have commented above.  The colors above are taken verbatim from my
[~/.Xdefaults](http://phraktured.net/config/.Xdefaults) file, with "color0"
converted to "\e]P0" and "color16" converted to "\e]PF".

Note the last 'clear'.  If you set these colors without clearing the terminal,
the background color will change (assuming 'color0' changed) only for new text.
You will get odd artifacting.

Here is a <a href="http://img.phraktured.net/screenshots/foo.png">screenshot</a>
of my current, non-X setup, using the terminus consolefont (ter-112n) and the
above colors.

Enjoy!