Re: curses corrupt when TERM is "linux" - but only under X
On Tue, Jan 06, 2004 at 04:29:55PM -0500, Christopher Martin wrote:
> Just wondering if anyone knows what the issue is here.
>
> Any curses (menuconfig, alsamixer, etc.) apps I run in an xterm
> (xterm, aterm, konsole - they all do the same thing) work well if the
> TERM variable is set to "xterm", but look partially corrupt if I set
> TERM to "linux". Interestingly, if I hit Ctrl-Alt-F1 and get a real
> console, curses apps work fine, even though TERM is set to "linux".
> So for some reason ncurses doesn't like a TERM of "linux" when in an
> x terminal window.
>
> Is this a known problem? Is there any solution, given that for various
> reasons I want to set my TERM to "linux"?
By setting TERM=linux you're telling applications to use escape
sequences that xterm doesn't understand. TERM=linux means "my terminal
is a Linux virtual console; please act accordingly", so indeed hitting
Ctrl-Alt-F1 will work perfectly. I'd be quite surprised if there were
any "solution" to this, as it's not actually a problem as such; it's
part of the definition of $TERM. As a rather ugly workaround, you might
be able to use screen(1) to remap the escape sequences - look for TERM
in its man page.
Could you elaborate on why you want to set TERM=linux in contexts where
that's not true? I would try to fix whatever problem is making you want
to do that.
Cheers,
--
Colin Watson [cjwatson@flatline.org.uk]
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