I've been slowly accreting a system that fits me. I installed a somewhat lean 10.2, eschewing KDE and all the window managers and duplicate applications (how many text editors does one really need?). I have installed OpenBox3 and pypanel (and tried to install adesklets, but for some reason it won't...yet), and put together a simple interface with a few custom keybindings and right-click menu items, for the necessities: firefox; xterm; ObConf; ROX-filer.

Now, I'm just about done with the customizations. I've changed the background color for xterm, and have been trying to change the LS_COLORS environment variable so things look right. I'm having a couple of issues, though:

(1) The background color for xterm worked fine...except that, this morning, I noticed that when I highlight anything in Firefox (and maybe in general, but I've only been highlighting in Firefox since having changed xterm's settings), and switch back to an open xterm window, the background has been changed back to white...except for behind the prompt and any rendered text.

(2) I've read man dir_colors and man dircolors, found /etc/DIR_COLORS and copied it as ~/.dir_colors. That didn't seem to work, so I made a backup of /etc/DIR_COLORS then changed the values in it, but that didn't seem to work, either. Note that I have quit and restarted X with each change, to reload the variable (though there's probably a smarter way to do it), so it isn't that. I even ran dircolors -P (the man page says the switch should be lowercase, but it wasn't recognized while the uppercase was) and found that the correct colors are in dircolors' internal database (or so it would seem). No luck.

I know xterm isn't the most customizable X terminal, but it works well enough. I might install aterm or rxvt if it seems a better fit, but I'd like to see if I can avoid quitting on xterm. It occurs to me, as I write this, that maybe I should change the alias for ls from ls -color=auto to something else, but I assume the "auto" refers to the environment variable, which I thought I'd changed.

Does anyone have any recommendations?

I was reading somewhere else, and it occurred to me: do I need to issue eval `dircolors -b` to output to LS_COLORS? That's already in /etc/profile, so I assume it's run when X launches, but I'm not sure.

I dont have an answer, was just reading your thread and I agree way too much choice in slackware default LOL.

I too have been going lean and mean. I wish I could see how Open box worked. Any chance of you giving some pointers on this after your done?

Check out the amigo site by the way, it's pretty cool for us lean and mean guys.

I'm on zipslack on a few pc's w/blackbox. I like it but I cant find where stuff goes when I minimize too good.

If I have choice, I'm a mess. No discipline.

Completely. It's really very simple to work with. Two XML files for your settings.

I'll have to. I've never heard of it.

I thought about going ZipSlack to begin with, but I figured I'd just make sure not to install too much junk.

Are you using a panel with Blackbox? I have something with enough transparency to stay out of the way, but with enough opacity to offer a little visual appeal and show minimized windows. I'd like an option that only shows the icon or only the app name, and not both; but it's only 24 pixels high so it's no big deal. It's pypanel, if you're interested.

Hi.

No just blackbox. I found the pypanel on amigo's site.

there address is: http://amigolinux.org/

tho i havent had a chance to try it out yet.

i just moved over to zip slack and started using the black box. it's so fast for old pc's i really like it.

but it does need some kind of panel.

Well, I kind of have it working okay. I have loaded LS_COLORS for my regular user account with the colors I want, and then reverted the /etc/profile to normal so my root account has some coloring. I need to set things up for root in XTerm, though, because root colors only work in console because I don't have the alias for ls set up. I assume putting it in [I]/root[I] isn't the appropriate place to put root-specific attribute customization.

I had worked up a bash script in /etc/profile.d/, but I kept getting errors that arose, I'm sure, from my lack of familiarity with shell scripts. That'll come.

The solution, though, was just to get [I]eval `dircolors ~/.dir_colors -b` to actually execute in an automated fashion. That's what was in the bash script, as well as some stuff to get my prompt to vary by uid and also by whether or not I was interacting with bash via an xterm or the system console, but it didn't really work out, as I mentioned. But LS_COLORS is maintained inside dircolors database, so if you run $ eval `dircolors path_to_file/colors_file -b`, and have the right stuff in that file, it should remember it thereafter.

It's not terribly clear, but hopefully helpful nonetheless.

i created a file in my home directory called .Xdefaults, then i added this:it's a decent start, and easily modified....maybe this will help you get where you're going?

"I'm on zipslack on a few pc's w/blackbox. I like it but I cant find where stuff goes when I minimize too good."

Middleclick on desktop -> iconified windows

I didn't know there were that many parameters that you could set up. Thanks for the tip. Also, have you had any problems with the xterm window redrawing with the default color everywhere except behind the text? It's not mission critical, or anything; but it's annoying. Sometimes it happens when I minimize then maximize, sometimes it happens when I've switched windows. I haven't really discerned a pattern, because it also doesn't happen sometimes when those things are done.

Again, though, thanks.

detpenguin, you did it. Telling XTerm to use a loginShell was the key. Now, my customize.sh sets up a PS1 variable that knows whether or not I'm at a system console or an xterm, and in the former case gives me my full prompt with user- and hostname, while in the latter case the user- and hostnames and working directory are in the window title.

The only thing I need to figure out now is how to make this behavior work when I log into the root account from the user account, i.e. give me the red prompt to alert me to my being super user whether or not I'm logging in to the system from a login prompt or by issuing su.

Anyone know how to make bash scripts in /etc/profile.d/ execute when logging in via su?

If not, no big deal. I'll figure out something (maybe a .bashrc in /root).

Daniel

So, taking that logic that determines whether I'm using a console or xterm, and putting it in /root, did the trick. I really hope this is helpful to someone, because I'm blathering on a bit about colorized prompts.

You might try using xtermcontrol which you can get from my site. You could write a wrapper for your terminal which would set up your environment before starting it.

As for a panel, I prefer to not use Python, so pypanel is out. What I use with WindowMaker is taskbar (1.0.3 does LM sensors) or fbpanel-2.2, which supports gnome-applets(I think). An even lighter panel is fspanel.

Thanks. I eventually will use some more automation, but I'd like to know what it is I'm automating.

I'll take a look. Thanks. Why the aversion to Python?

My 'fast' computer is a PentiumII 333MHz.Python chokes it up terribly.
I used to use a python-based 'runbox' which took around 5 seconds to start. grun or gtk-launcher, both for GTK-1.2 start in a half-second.

Studying the documentation for xtermcontrol will probably help you understand better what xterm can and can't do, and how. I haven't really used it yet -I've only run the demos. But they are pretty impressive.

If you are putting together your own light-weight desktop, you definitely should look all over my download site. Start in GUIcomponents for the basics like window managers, panels, menu tools, etc:
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/...GUIcomponents/

Even if you choose to use my binary packages or not use my sources at all, I've tried to put useful stuff together in the same area, and anything extra for a certain program will be in a subdir called Resources inside the source directory. Often there are patches there, or tips that I have found, accessory programs, etc.