Why do I get a train when I run 'ls'?

I have recently noticed something odd that I don't like very much:

So why am I getting a train upon running ls? And how can I stop this and make it behave normally? Is this an Easter Egg that I have discovered? I am running Ubuntu GNOME 15.04.

Information Update:

Running which ls gets me the same train, and running ls -l $(which ls) just gets me another type of train.

Running command -v ls outputs nothing. And running command -v sl also outputs nothing.

This may all have something to do with the cow (or something like that) package that I recently installed that promised to 'lighten things up a little'.

Solution 1:

1. Try to remove the funny package via

   sudo apt-get purge sl 
   

2. Check your aliases for ls e.g. in your ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile.

3. Check the binary /usr/games/sl and delete

   sudo rm /usr/games/sl
   

4. Check the output of

   strace sl |& grep execve
   strace ls |& grep execve
   

   if point three has no success.

5. And in future, do NOT install anything that promises to 'lighten things up a little' in the description. ;)

Solution 2:

Generally, you can prepend \ to a command to disable aliasing only for that instance of the command run. E.g.,

[2023]$ alias ls
alias ls='ls -F -Chs --color=tty'
[2024]$ ls
total 140K
4.0K bin/           0 Downloads@           0 prog.git@
...

[2025]$ \ls
bin  Downloads     doc.git  freertos.git  prog.git  tmp
...

So, I recommend trying your ls with a prepended '\'

Next, you can try running the ls command directly with full path.

/bin/ls

Next, command /bin/ls

also, check your path,

echo $PATH
make sure that /bin is the first entry.
$PATH=/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin

But, I believe that removing cow would help.