Stopping colored listings for ls

Most of the time, I use putty for terminal sessions and the very first thing I end up doing is running unalias ls because I just cannot stand colored output from ls. I had been telling myself to do something about it for awhile but I never do as it is such a simple matter.

But finally, I got bugged enough that I decided to permanently remove the colored output from ls for me and the rest of the staff who have the same issue. Here is how:

1. Login as root on your CentOS server
2. Edit the /etc/profile.d/colors.sh
3. Comment out the line:

   alias ls='ls --color=tty' 2>/dev/null
   
   Change to:
   ## DISABLED alias ls='ls --color=tty' 2>/dev/null
   

4. Now logout and log back in again and you should not see colors for ls any more
6. Of course, if you do not want to logout this time, you can also run source /etc/profile.d/colors.sh to rerun this file, which gets run when you login and use bash shell.

Now from time to time if you have color cravings, you always execute ls --color=tty manually or create a temporary alias using alias ls='ls --color=tty' if you really, really need colors bad!

Cheers!

Kabir

Category: annoyance, shell | Tags: