my friends linux is all pretty, when he types ls he gets a color listing, i have to type ls --color even when i use ls --color=always i still only get color results once. apparently he's to 1337 to tell me

your shell has a variable called LS_COLORS,
type
'env'

to see if you have it set.


ex.
LS_COLORS=no=00:fi=00:di=00;34:ln=00;36i=40;33:so=00;35:bd=40;33;01
:cd=40;33;01r=01;05;37;41:mi=01;05;37;41:ex=00;32:*.cmd=00;32:*.exe=00;32:*.com=00
;32:*.btm=00;32:*.bat=00;32:*.sh=00;32:*.csh=00;32:*.tar=00;31:*.tgz=00;31:*.arj=00;31:*
.taz=00;31:*.lzh=00;31:*.zip=00;31:*.z=00;31:*.Z=00;31:*.gz=00;31:*.bz2=00;31:*.bz=00;31:
*.tz=00;31:*.rpm=00;31:*.cpio=00;31:*.jpg=00;35:*.gif=00;35:*.bmp=00;35:*.xbm=00;35:
*.xpm=00;35:*.png=00;35:*.tif=00;35:

just make an alias in your bashrc file

ok heres what i get

PWD=/
PS1=\h:\w\$
USER=root
MAIL=/var/mail/root
SSH_CLIENT=192.168.0.2 3955 22
LOGNAME=root
SHLVL=1
SHELL=/bin/bash
HOME=/root
TERM=xterm
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11
SSH_TTY=/dev/pts/0
_=/usr/bin/env
OLDPWD=/root

now how do i edit it?

think at the bottom of that file put

alias ls "ls --color"

is that just a text file i can edit?

yes, assuming you are using the bourne again shell (bash) this file would be .bash_profile
.login or .bashrc .

found by typing ls -al in your home directory.

add what the other posters had said to this file. and relogin.

Cool, thanks guys it was the .bashrc file in the root and all the color coding was just commented out