Notices

Hmm, I went and looked around a bit. Do you think something as simple a cp /mnt/initfs/busybox ..... would work to get the right shell with the colorized ls available in my standard shell?

busybox can have different functionality compiled in, so while that would get you color ls, it might break something else (that's not compiled into the initfs version)... Worst case, reboot loop requiring reflash, if you aren't multibooting.