[comp.unix.ultrix] Problem defining vt300 on a Sun4

mking@lll-crg.llnl.gov (Marianne King) (01/25/91)

When I rlogin from a DEC/Ultrix machine to other Unix machines I am
having a problem defining a vt300 terminal.  The problem occurs when I
use vi.  By the way, please save your snide remarks about vi for
some other time ;) On a Sun 3/Unix 4.2 and a BSD 4.3 machine I set my
TERMCAP environment variable to /home1/mking/mytermcap which contains
the termcap entry for a vt300 terminal and vi works properly.
However, on a Sun 4 release 4.1 I get the following message when I
run vi:

vt300: Unknown terminal type
I don't know what kind of terminal you are on - all I have is 'vt300'

At this point vi is basically useless.  I can define the terminal as
a vt200 or vt100 to get "vi" to work.  However, I would like to find a
better solution.

Marianne E. King
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
mking@lll-crg.llnl.gov
(415) 423-4116

jpn@genrad.com (John P. Nelson) (01/26/91)

>                   On a Sun 3/Unix 4.2 and a BSD 4.3 machine I set my
>TERMCAP environment variable to /home1/mking/mytermcap which contains
>the termcap entry for a vt300 terminal and vi works properly.
>However, on a Sun 4 release 4.1 I get the following message when I
>run vi:
>
>vt300: Unknown terminal type

Right.  The SunOS 4.1 "vi" is the system V "vi":  It uses the
"terminfo" database, not termcap.  I found this to be incredibly
annoying also, the first time I discovered it.

>At this point vi is basically useless.  I can define the terminal as
>a vt200 or vt100 to get "vi" to work.  However, I would like to find a
>better solution.

Apparently, you can set the environment variable TERMINFO to point to
a directory containing compiler terminfo database files, similarly to
the way the TERMCAP environment variable works.  You can't put the
entire TERMINFO entry into an environment variable like TERMCAP.

I hope this helps...

     john nelson

uucp:	{decvax,mit-eddie}!genrad!jpn
domain:	jpn@genrad.com

jimbo@avalon.itp.ucsb.edu (01/26/91)

Vi uses terminfo files in /usr/share/lib/terminfo/v.  We did:

% ln vt220 vt300

and all is fine now.


--

Jim Davidson, ITP UCSB
jimbo@avalon.itp.ucsb.edu