[SOLVED] 256 Colors in Amazon AMI SSH Session

256 Colors in Amazon AMI SSH Session

I have a few ec2 instances of the Amazon linux ami (amzn-ami-pv-2013.09.2.x86_64-ebs) which I ssh into for python development in vim. I'd like to begin using some of the 256 color themes like blackboard or codeschool, but am having trouble getting a 256 color terminal. I'm ssh'ing in from Mac OSX.

A few notes:

running tput colors from the shell returns 256
echo $TERM returns xterm-256color
however, running scripts like http://www.robmeerman.co.uk/_media/unix/256colors2.pl reveal that only 16 colors are available

I've tried the suggestions found pages like this one (and many others): http://vim.wikia.com/wiki/256_colors_in_vim

But haven't gotten the terminal itself to correctly display 256 colors. I'd like to use screen with 256 colors too, but need to get the terminal working correctly first.

Is anyone else running into this with the Amazon AMIs?

Thanks a bunch!

UPDATE: I can see 256 colors when ssh'ing via putty from my Windows box. This might be a function of the Mac OSX shell.

Solution