Terminal.app Console String Emulation

[Punani]

I often telnet into my university's Solaris system to save some files to edit, or mess with my homepage a bit. One thing that has always confused me is the fact that the system doesn't understand Terminal.app's string declaring what is (e.g. "xterm-color") and subsequently, vi and a few other programs go nuts and do a segmentation fault.

Is this a problem with Apple's emulation, or the host system?

 

[broken_keyboard]

I'm not sure, I would guess that individual programs have to each be programmed to support various terminal types and some of the progs on your unix server have never heard of an xterm-color terminal. (old?)

You could try changing the value before you use them, e.g.
export TERM=vt100

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I often telnet into my university's Solaris system to save some files to edit, or mess with my homepage a bit. One thing that has always confused me is the fact that the system doesn't understand Terminal.app's string declaring what is (e.g. "xterm-color") and subsequently, vi and a few other programs go nuts and do a segmentation fault.

Is this a problem with Apple's emulation, or the host system?

I suspect it's neither - the applications you're using don't understand the variable values Terminal.app uses and segfault. Therefore, your best bet is to get a new version and/or recompile. Why are you using vi anyway? If you invoke vi on a default Mac OS X 10.3.X install, vim (vi improved) loads instead, and it works just fine.

 

[Mord]

i suspect this thread should be in the software section

 

[wrldwzrd89]

I'm not sure, I would guess that individual programs have to each be programmed to support various terminal types and some of the progs on your unix server have never heard of an xterm-color terminal. (old?)

You could try changing the value before you use them, e.g.
export TERM=vt100

If you continue to have problems, you could always put the commands to change these variables in ~/.profile - the commands there are executed every time a new shell starts. Make sure to use the command appropriate to your shell. export var=value only works in BASH.

 

[Punani]

Sorry about posting this thread in the hardware help (I was half-asleep), could someone be so kind and move it to software help?

Also, I telnet into a system, so I am not using the vi/vim loaded with Mac OS X, but whatever that version of Solaris came with.

Coincidentally, this is not an issue if I use xterm (i.e. X11R6)

 

[wrldwzrd89]

Sorry about posting this thread in the hardware help (I was half-asleep), could someone be so kind and move it to software help?

Also, I telnet into a system, so I am not using the vi/vim loaded with Mac OS X, but whatever that version of Solaris came with.

Coincidentally, this is not an issue if I use xterm (i.e. X11R6)

Hmm...that's strange. Is it normal for a remote system used via telnet to be affected by variables on the system you're telnetting from? That doesn't sound normal to me - but I don't know that much about telnet.

 

[Doctor Q]

I've had trouble when telneting to a system that didn't know the particular terminal type I had set on the originating system. If programs are using the curses library, they may exit, blow up, or do the wrong things when your terminal type is incorrect or unknown to them. vi is supposed to be polite about it and use the non-full-screen "open mode" method of editing when it doesn't know your terminal type. In any case, setting TERM to a value that matches your terminal emulator, or to a barebones minimum like "vt220" or "ansi" can sometimes get you out of the jam.