Terminfo and emacs
I may have jacked up my terminfo database.
I built emacs from sources today. A very recent beta of emacs-21.
I used no special flags with ./configure since emacs has quite a smart
configure and make setup. Just ran it like:
./configure
make
make install
There were no build errors or even warning messages that I saw.
My first attempt to run it gives me the error:
`can't find termcap data base'
Being a new user of debian I hadn't notice until then that debian uses
the newer terminfo. I found it at /etc/terminfo.
I'm pretty sure emacs is smart enought to find the database but thougt
maybe it wants it to be in /usr/share.
At this point stupidity started to rear its oh so human head, and I
decided to copy it to /usr/share. I took a hasty glance at
ls /usr/share, but didn't see anthing to give me pause.
cp -a /etc/terminfo /usr/share
That blew up with a batch of messages like file such and such was the
same as file so and so.
Turns out there is already a /usr/share/terminfo. Now I'm not sure
what I've done. /usr/share/terminfo is quite a lot bigger than
/etc/terminfo But maybe a result of my dumb move.
Are there really two terminfo directories?
In addition to solving the emacs problem, now I want to know where to
read up on the commands that give system package info.
I see quite a few in `man dpkg', that give basic infomation but I think
there are more. Things that will tell what package a file belongs to.
In fact I'm pretty sure there are a full range of such commands that
are similar to the rpm package manager in that they can pull up all
kinds of detailed info about files and packages.
Maybe something that can verify if a stock directroy has been screwed
up.
Something like the rpm commands `rpm -qf </path/FILE>' will tell
exactly what package a file belongs to. Then with that info you can
say rpm -V <package> to find out if the package or its files are
screwed.
dpgk -l 'terminfo*' doesn't know anything about terminfo
People have told me the debian package manager is more sophisticated
yet, and can pull up more detailed info. What do I need to read to get
on top of those kind of commands?
Any hints on what is causing the emacs problem.
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