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Neil
Asked: 2009-05-21 10:18:19 +0800 CST

Is there a way to get ls to print in colour in busybox?

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I'm on a nokia n810 device, which uses busybox instead of the usual gnu coreutils. Is there a way to get busybox's ls to print in colour?

linux unix maemo busybox

3 Answers

  1. ls --color doesn't work?

    I thought it was supposed to on the more recent versions.

    http://www.busybox.net/downloads/BusyBox.html

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  2. Best Answer

    The current busybox version for the latest release of Diablo (43-7) is 1.6.1, which as you've seen doesn't include options for colour.

    A fully coloured version of ls can be installed on the n810 from Andrey's repository.
    If you don't wish to install and use this repository you can install ls-color manually by downloading and using dpkg -i.

    Then as x3ja says you can create an alias for it, although since Maemo uses Busybox your default shell is sh, so you'll have to put the alias in your .profile

    alias ls='ls.color'

    Installing bash is also easy if you so wish - bash2 can be installed from the Maemo extras repository, and bash3 is available through the gronmayer link below.

    A great resource for finding apps in certain repositories is gronmayer's site, and of course the latest developments from Maemo Talk.

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  3. You could of course put something like this in your login scripts (.bashrc or similar):

    alias ls='ls --color=auto'

    Then when you type ls, it will actually run the command ls --color=auto and so it will display in colour*.

    * Sorry for the British spelling, but I am British after all :)

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