Forcing monochrome text on TTY terminals.

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Hello,

In the spirit of feeling a bit more retro, I am wondering if there is a configuration file that would force my TTY terminals to display in monochrome. Editors like Emacs 23 seem to use a full spectrum of colors. While this is a nice feature I'd like to force monochrome color. Black or white(or green). I'm using a black and white TV and a converter. A binary color scheme would be nice.

[nixblog]

You could try looking at the setterm command, check the manual page

man setterm

You could try adding the following to /etc/rc.local

echo -en "\\033[32m\\033[8]" > /dev/tty1

This will result in green text output - repeat the entry for tty2, 3 etc... You will probably have to reboot for it to take effect.

Other than that, a lot of ncurses apps can be configured to give colored text or, just plain white or green - just refer to man page for the particular app or check the docs on it's website.

[Pixel_Outlaw]

Thank you for this information!

I'll give it a go when I get home from work.

[fanderal]

Another option is editing the color settings in ~.bashrc and/or ~.emacsrc. Log out/log in to see console/tty1 (~.bashrc) effects. Googling .bashrc+color+example or .emacsrc+color+example might provide some interesting color schemes.