How can I change the background to be black and text color to be green or cyan in bash? How can I change the colors so that when I type in "ls" I will see files to be green, and directories to be blue and executables to be red? Then, if I change to superuser, how do I make the colors work for the superuser?

add this to .bashrc
# enable color support of ls and also add handy aliases
if [ "$TERM" != "dumb" ]; then
eval "`dircolors -b`"
alias ls='ls --color=auto'
#alias dir='ls --color=auto --format=vertical'
#alias vdir='ls --color=auto --format=long'
fi


Also take a look at
http://www.google.com/search?q=bashr...nt=iceweasel-a

Repo, this worked to give some colors for the "ls" command, but it does not let me to set what color I want. How can I modify it to get any color that I want to have?

Repo, I will take a look at the link to see if I can find something to set the background color and the text color for the Bash program.

[EDIT] Repo, if I make a file for the dircolors then I can make my own colors for the ls command. That solves that part.

If you use gnome-terminal, you can set it in the profile
right click in the terminal => edit current profile

Is that what you want?
http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Bash-Prompt-HOWTO/

Also, you can change the colors in the output of ls --color by editing /etc/DIR_COLORS on most distributions.

Found this old link from 2004 that does not work for me since I do not have xtermset or .Xdefaults. Repo, for the Gnome terminal I did find that I can set a profile and a window pops up that allows me to change any settings bash. Repo, from your links, it looks like it is called a console. I can save the profile and then next time that I open a gnome terminal it will go back to the default profile and I have to then manually reselect the profile that I saved.

Isn't there a way to make these same settings in the bashrc file so that it will work each time I start bash? I could not find out what to put into the bashrc file to set the background color and text color and prompt color. There was a lot of links telling how to set the color of text in the console, but nothing on how to set the profile like you can in the window for the gnome terminal. What file does the gnome terminal make when you create those settings? And, how do I make the settings different for the superuser? With bashrc I can have different settings!

Uncle, that lets me change the bash prompt. I want to change the entire color of the console!

Also found this post.

[EDIT] The gnome terminal profile background color and foreground color is based on the system theme. What file has these settings?

The gnome terminal profile uses a default profile. What file sets this?

OK, first, let's make it clear. Do you want to change background and foreground colors in a terminal emulator _under X_ (in GUI, like KDE or GNOME), *or* do you want to change background/foreground in bare console, without X?

If former, you can try things like
(quite a painful combination, but just to give you the idea )

If the latter, you have two ways of going about it.
First, if you're using framebuffer for the console, you should read this thread. Read it to the end. http://osdir.com/ml/linux.fbdev.user.../msg00008.html

If you don't use the framebuffer, then the prompt how-to is actually the only way you can have different colors.

the right-click-on-terminal then edit profile settings should work and is set only once, probably you are logging from a different machine?