# Console colors

## anarchypower

Dear community, 

I have been trying to figure this out for days and I haven't found a proper solution:

Is it possible to change my console font color? I want it to be green, even when the system is booting. It should be green on all 6 main terminals (tty1-6).

Any input is welcome, 

Thanks in advance.

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## CrankyPenguin

Here is a, seemingly useful, source from google.  Not sure about making it the default though.

http://www.developer.com/open/article.php/631241

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## Mike Hunt

I know there is a kernel option to set the default console font color in the OpenBSD kernel.  

I'm not aware of anything similar in linux though.  

Maybe you could ask Linus to do that, it would be very cool to have that,  I would make mine blue.   :Very Happy: 

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## BitJam

You may need to set up framebuffer console in order to be able to control the foreground color.   The names of things shift around sometimes which can be a PITA. You will need to emerge splashutils.  Google(gentoo framebuffer) to find instruction pages.

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## anarchypower

I have already installed a framebuffer (vesafb), but I can't seem to find a setting to change the foreground color.

Also, i have tried using 'export PS1' without succes. The colors do change when using 'export PS1', but when I open a man page for example, the color that is being displayed is still white...There should be something more persistent...

"for I in 1 2 3 4 5 6; do setterm -background black -foreground green -store > /dev/tty$I; done" does not change anything either...seems like setterm doesnt work at all...

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## Mike Hunt

manpage colors

There is a thread  here  full of cool shell color things.

And  even more here

Have fun.   :Smile: 

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## BitJam

I think you will also need to install splashutils which creates /etc/splash/ which holds the config files that will let you adjust the foreground color.

I was going to test this all for you but they've changed the interface yet again that breaks all my simple tools and the only tools they provide get more and more arcane with each iteration.

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## BitJam

I was unable to see any effect whatsoever from changing fgcolor and/or bgcolor in the config files.

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