Can I set my local machine’s terminal colors to use those of the machine I ssh into?

I have a color scheme that I like for when I’m in a terminal, but I ssh into the machine I work on from multiple sources (locally, PuTTY, my netbook, etc.) and I want to maintain the same color scheme throughout. Is this possible?

I especially want it in PuTTY; it’s difficult to change PuTTY colors.

Answers:

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Method 1

Colors in terminals are determined in two steps:

• the program running in the terminal tells the terminal to use a certain color number;
• the terminal translates each color number into a color value.

Xterm has an escape sequence to change the color value associated with a color number. I don’t remember whether PuTTY supports this sequence; I know Mintty does.

set_color_value () {
  printf "\e]4;$1;$2\a"
}
set_color_value 4 '#6495ed'  # set color 4 (blue) to CornflowerBlue

These settings won’t survive a terminal reset. You can overcome this difficulty by appending the cursor configuration changing sequence to your terminal’s reset string.

• On a terminfo-based system using ncurses, save your terminal’s terminfo settings to a file with infocmp >>~/etc/terminfo.txt. Edit the description to change the rs1 (basic reset) sequence, e.g. replace rs1=Ec by rs1=EcE]4;4;#6495edE\. With some programs and settings, you may need to change the rs2 (full reset) as well. Then compile the terminfo description with tic ~/etc/terminfo.txt (this writes under the directory $TERMINFO, or ~/.terminfo if unset).
• On a termcap-based system, grab the termcap settings from your termcap database (typically /etc/termcap). Change the is (basic reset) and rs (full reset) sequences to append your settings, e.g. :is=EcEcE]4;4;#6495edE\:. Set the TERMCAP environment variable to the edited value (beginning and ending with :).

Now you can put something like this in your ~/.profile:

if [ "$(ps -p $PPID -o comm=)" = sshd ] &&
   [ "$TERM" = "xterm" ]; then
  set_color_value … # set color scheme
  TERMCAP=…  # if necessary
fi

Method 2

You’re ssh-ing into just one box right? why not just set the PS1 variable on that box to use the colorscheme you want? If you keep it to 16 colors you shouldn’t have a problem on any modern TERM, most should support 256 colors, but most don’t set TERM=xterm-256color out of the box, and some fools (cough my employer cough) sanitize TERM to be alpha-numeric only. Unfortunately what to put in your PS vars, is highly dependent on the shell you are using.

All methods was sourced from stackoverflow.com or stackexchange.com, is licensed under cc by-sa 2.5, cc by-sa 3.0 and cc by-sa 4.0