I have a stupid newbie question:
I am not sure if this is the way it supposed to be or if this is a bug or what but... I m a trying to configure my terminal screen, so I type:

setterm -background white -foreground black (or whatever the colors)

This sets it fine, just as I want.

But as soon as I run another command (such as 'ls' in a directory with a lots of colored filenames) my screen goes back to funeral white on black! What gives?

Related question, not so important: what files should I play with to reconfigure the way colors are set on for my ls command?

Well thanks for help everyone, you shouldn't have.

I figured it out: '-store' option at the end of 'setterm' command will do the trick.
Files to play with for ls/dir color fonts are are /etc/DIR_COLORS