I know how to use old banner command to print a large, high quality banner on the screen or printer. Recently, I saw colorful banner on friends laptop. How do I display large colourful characters on screen, especially on terminal? How do I create colorful text banners on screen?
You can use following two programs to create colourful text banner:
a] figlet – Display large characters made up of ordinary screen characters.
b] toilet – Prints text using large characters made of smaller characters. It is similar in many ways to FIGlet with additional features such as Unicode handling, colour fonts, filters and various export formats.
Install figlet and toilet
Use yum or apt-get to install the tools:
$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get install toilet figlet
How do I use figlet?
Simply use it as follows:
$ figlet nixCraft
Sample output:
_ ____ __ _ _ __ (_)_ __/ ___|_ __ __ _ / _| |_ | '_ \| \ \/ / | | '__/ _` | |_| __| | | | | |>figlet fonts
The -f option can be used to specify font:
$ figlet -f big "nixCraft"
Sample output:_ _____ __ _ (_) / ____| / _| | _ __ ___ _| | _ __ __ _| |_| |_ | '_ \| \ \/ / | | '__/ _` | _| __| | | | | |>
$ figlet -f slant "nixCraft"
The -ct options centers the text and makes it take up the full width of the terminal:
$ figlet -ctf slant "nixCraft"
If you don’t want FIGlet to smush FIGcharacters into each other, use the -k (kerning) option:
$ figlet -k "cyberciti"
If figlet gets its input from a file, it is often a good idea to use -p:
$ figlet -p
To lists figlet fonts and control files, enter:
$ figlist
Sample outputDefault font: standard Font directory: /usr/share/figlet Figlet fonts in this directory: banner big block bubble digital ivrit lean mini mnemonic script shadow slant small smscript smshadow smslant standard term .... ..How do I use toilet command?
Use command as follows:
$ toilet -f bigmono9 -F gay nixCraft
$ toilet -f mono12 -F metal nixCraft
Sample output:
Where,toilet UNIX / Linux command screenshot
- -F filter-name: Set filter
- -f fontname : Set font name
To list installed filter, type:
$ toilet -F list
Sample output:
Available filters: "crop": crop unused blanks "gay": add a rainbow colour effect "metal": add a metallic colour effect "flip": flip horizontally "flop": flip vertically "rotate": perform a 180 degrees rotation
Running figlet / toilet automatically
Add command to your ~/.bashrc command so that banner get displayed every time you open terminal or console:
echo 'echo "Welcome to"' >> ~/.bashrc echo 'toilet -f mono12 -F metal nixCraft' >> ~/.bashrc
Recommended readings:
- figlet home page.
- Both commands offers lots of options, fonts and filters. Please read the man page for further details.
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That is awesome, while I have used figlet before I have never heard of toilet. Thanks for the article.
Same here; cheers fella.
Thats cool. I use fedora and do not seem to have both of them in the repos. I could install figlet from the source but am unable to locate the toilet. Could you post the home page of toilet.
“unable to locate the toilet”? LoL
that’s frigging hilarious lol :P
@Amit
Try: http://caca.zoy.org/toilet.html
I think figlet is available from EPEL or RPMForege REPO.
great, Thanks… now i dont have to search for “make OR generate ascii map OR image” on google anymore whenever i setup a new server.
Is it working good in RHEL5? Should I use the same package for that or not?
Hi
Cool stuff but i get this when i applied this command echo ‘Welcome to’ >> ~/.bashrc
bash: Welcome: command not found
bash: Welcome: command not found
@ashu,
I’ve updated the faq. Open your ~/.bashrc and change Welcome to line as:
I’m using Fedora 10 and am getting an error trying to configure TOIlet:
configure: error: you need libcucul version 0.99.beta10 or later
Whats the best way to go about solving this since I am pretty certain that libcucul was merged into libcaca? (I have the latest version of libcaca)
Wonderful !!
sooo…. this looks amazing! though i get this error:
[root@chris ~]# yum install toilet figlet
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
* addons: mirrors.versaweb.com
* atomic: www5.atomicorp.com
* base: mirror.hmc.edu
* extras: mirrors.versaweb.com
* updates: mirror.hmc.edu
Excluding Packages in global exclude list
Finished
Setting up Install Process
No package toilet available.
No package figlet available.
Nothing to do
Plz give me source code to display the message in enlarged characters in unix language.
Here is a list of the different fonts available for toilet from the Ubuntu 12.04 LTS package list.
ascii12
ascii9
bigascii12
bigascii9
bigmono12
bigmono9
circle
emboss
emboss2
future
letter
mono12
mono9
pagga
smascii12
smascii9
smblock
smbraille
smmono12
smmono9
wideterm
how to remove banner text?
hey how I make my terminal like this :
http://postimg.org/image/uiavxjawd/
I want a continuous banner on a linux terminal.
like when i press enter and move to next prompt, the banner remain same and don’t removed like MOTD .
MOTD is a one time display. i want a continous banner on a terminal.