Lost ls directory highlighting after a crash

Question

Normally commands such as ls and grep offer nice syntax highlighting for me. But my system crashed (running an ubuntu VM) and after I restarted, I no longer have this highlighting, it's all a dreary grey.

Nano, however, notably does do it's normal highlighting.

I don't know where to start looking for why I don't have directory highlighting any more, or why grep doesn't highlight matched lines any more.

Answer 1

The thing that makes ls use colors is the alias set by the default bash config, something like this:

alias ls="ls --color=auto"

This is generally in /etc/bash.bashrc or ~/.bashrc. It is possible that one of those files got corrupted when your system crashed. Do this in your VM:

sudo touch /forcefsck

And reboot it. Then check those files.

Answer 2

"syntax highlighting" in bash for ls command is controled by --color switch

If you want to add to your bash edit ~/.bashrc file. This is how end of my .bashrc looks like:

alias ls='ls --color=always'
alias less='less -r'

to force reading of .bashrc just start new bash shell or logout and login

this 2 aliases will make command:

ls -al | less

have color, also you can add something like this:

alias l='ls -al --color=always | less -r'

to just type l and to have color directory output and page-per-page output.