Define colour

Synopsis

  colour [--basic <basic ANSI colour>] [--rgb <RGB value>] <colour>

Examples

Redefine colour 7 as ANSI red

  colour --basic 1 7

Redefine colour 7 as ANSI red and use it as the default foreground colour

  colour --basic 1 7
  cpair --foreground 7 0

Redefine colour 4 as midnight blue

  colour --rgb 0x191970 4

Description

Define the specified colour index (in the range 0 to 7) to use the specified basic ANSI colour (in the range 0 to 7) and the specified 24-bit RGB colour (in the range 0x000000 to 0xffffff). The basic ANSI colour will be used on consoles which do not support arbitrary RGB colours.

If the RGB value is omitted, then only the basic ANSI colour will be used. If the basic ANSI colour is omitted, then the default colour (white foreground, black or transparent background) will be used.

The default colour definitions are:

Colour index	Basic ANSI colour
0	0 (black)
1	1 (red)
2	2 (green)
3	3 (yellow)
4	15 (blue or transparent)¹⁾
5	5 (magenta)
6	6 (cyan)
7	7 (white)
9	9 (default)²⁾

Command status

Success	The colour was successfully defined
Failure	The colour was not successfully defined

Build options

This command is available only when the build option CONSOLE_CMD is enabled.

Notes

To change the default foreground and background colour used by iPXE, you must use the cpair command to redefine colour pair 0 to use your chosen colours.

Not all consoles support full RGB colours. You can use the basic ANSI colour as a fallback. For example, to define colour 6 as turqouise, falling back to cyan if RGB colours are not available:

  colour --basic 6 --rgb 0x40e0d0 6

¹⁾

ANSI colours are in the range 0 to 7 inclusive. The special value 15 is used to indicate the “magic” colour, which will be transparent on consoles which support a transparent background but blue on consoles which do not support transparency. This allows iPXE menus (and other user interfaces) to automatically become semi-transparent when a background picture is present.

²⁾

ANSI colour 9 indicates “default”: this will be white when used as a foreground colour and black (or transparent) when used as a background colour. Colour index 9 cannot be redefined using the colour command.

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