[comp.sys.sun] Big Woes, Little VI

vernhes@aida.econ.yale.edu (Frederique Vernhes) (11/01/90)

I need some assistance with vi and SunOS4.1: I found that on my
workstation, ever since I installed 4.1, vi has been misbehaving in the
following manner:

1) Suppose I am down in the middle of a file and I use ^U to go back
   towards the top. Instead of scrolling the whole file up, it only updates
   the top line.

2) I try to Open a line above the first one, and it just writes over it on
   the screen, without scrolling stuff down. In reality, however, it does the
   correct thing, and a ^L will show that.

3) When I login over the phone with a modem, I use an IBM/PC running
   Xenix. In the past, I have found that I could use vi reasonnably well if I
   set my terminal to ansi. Actually, I still can edit reasonnably well with
   any Sun running SunOS 4.0.3. 

4) I have mapped (in my .exrc file) a few keys, some of which are function
   keys. I noticed that again, under 4.1, the function keys do not work,
   whereas if I rlogin to another Sparc running 4.0.3, they do work. (the
   .exrc file is the same since I use the same home directory on the two
   machines mentionned here.)

I checked the termcap entries for ansi terminals, and it seems the same.
Actually, it would not matter since vi now uses the terminfo library.
Does anyone knows what is going on? I must add that when I installed the
SunOS4.1, I selected sys V as optional software. 

iwamoto@gandalf.nosc.mil (Harvey A. Iwamoto) (11/21/90)

On my SPARCstation 1+, vi behaves strangely after using Ckermit to talk to
a remote Unix system via the Serial B port.  Using vt100, vt102 or the
special sun termcap that was set up still produces the problems after
logging out and returning to the Sun environment.

The worst vi problem occurs while using j to move down the file.  At some
point part of the text is moved to the top of the screen, there is about
10 blank lines, and then sometimes the next line is at the bottom of the
screen or somewhere near the bottom.  A ^L will verify that the cursor is
moving through the file correctly.

Is there some environment variable that is getting set to 24 lines?
Looking at eeprom the screensize still indicates 34 lines.

Any pointers would be greatly appreciated.  Thanks!!!
Harvey Iwamoto
iwamoto@nosc.mil

vernhes@aida.econ.yale.edu (Frederique Vernhes) (11/21/90)

I would like to thank all the people who have answered. Enough of them
told me to run tic and captoinfo if I had changed or customized any of the
termcap entries. Although I had not done so, I still read tic(8) a few
times, until it clicked: It all has to do with TERMINFO.

We have SAS running on these computers. We installed it under SunOS4.0.3.
Sas comes with its own terminfo library. This means I have the variable
TERMINFO defined as ~sas/terminfo in my setup. This works fine with SunOS
4.0.2, but it does not anymore with SunOS 4.1. On the machine that runs
4.1, I reset TERMINFO to /usr/lib/terminfo. and BINGO, vi is behaving.....

	Again, thanks to all who answered.

Frederique,

	Frederique L. Vernhes   vernhes@econ.yale.edu
Systems administrator, Sparcstations, Economics Department, Yale University.