I dig into. The "tput op" does not do what is expected. The our 8.x kernel series have added following options: # UTF-8 console support options VESA options SC_PIXEL_MODE # add support for the raster text mode options TEKEN_UTF8 # UTF-8 output handling options TEKEN_XTERM # xterm-style terminal emulation But the TERM settings is not xterm, but still cons25. It suffices to change cons25 into xterm in src/init.c and debian/share/inittab.kfreebsd-gnu in source package sysvinit.Thanks for investigating. It's probably the way to go. xterm also brings partial support for UTF-8, and we are likely to deprecate (remove ?) 7.x kernel for squeeze.I did some minimal checking, by changing TERM to xterm on the console and it seems at least arrow keys stop working correctly on ncurses programs.I confirm the issue here, so it seems we have to revert the options in the kernel. That's a pitty because the goal was to use the UTF-8 terminal to be able to have non-english language in debian-installer.
I looked into HEAD, it have changes: SVN rev 197115 on 2009-09-12 10:34:34Z by ed - Make 8-bit support run-time configurable. SVN rev 197117 on 2009-09-12 12:44:21Z by ed - Make xterm/cons25 support runtime configurable. SVN rev 197481 on 2009-09-25 13:51:01Z by ed - Add a new escape sequence to switch between cons25 and xterm. - Just run this to switch to xterm: printf '\e[=T' - If you get bored and want to switch back to cons25, run this: printf '\e[=1T' So 1st step would be revert kernel config to 8-STABLE default.We still could later do backport of teken/syscons changes from HEAD and teach installer how to switch into XTERM, given there will be man-power for this.
Petr