Sam MacDonald writes: > I did a "shutdown -r now" just to be sure something wasn't messed up. You rarely have to restart a UNIX machine. I can think of only two common reasons that are not related to hardware issues: 1) You need to change the running kernel. 2) You need to test the startup config to make sure it works (i.e. so it works when you are not around to fix it). > I'm just sort of curious as to why it would change? > guess 1 the file is more then just a log file > [...] > guess 3 the file is just a log file but it has and attribute in > the header that changes the color. The log file contained terminal escape sequences. Every terminal has it's own escape sequences. VT100 is probably the most common. Here is a good list: http://www.termsys.demon.co.uk/vtansi.htm As an example, the following command will set yellow text on a black background. You should run "clear" after running this: echo -e "\033[0;33;40m" > When my machine starts I get the prompt to login as follows. > "debian login: eth0: media 10baset, silicon revision4" > > I'm thinking it's a timing thing because this old laptop is, well old. > It would seam the final message about "eth0" coming up. just pops in > after the "debian login:" prompt is displayed. That is precisely what is happening. Just wait for everything to startup, then press enter to get a new prompt. -- David Phillips <david at acz.org> http://david.acz.org/ _______________________________________________ TCLUG Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota http://www.mn-linux.org tclug-list at mn-linux.org https://mailman.real-time.com/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list