[XCSSA] Unix serial terminal setup.

[John D. Baker]

> Message: 2
> Date: Thu, 03 Jan 2002 20:17:11 -0600
> From: firestorm_v1 <firestorm-v1@satx.rr.com>
> To: xcssa@xcssa.org
> Subject: Re: [XCSSA] More Sun serial port hijinx.
> Reply-To: xcssa@xcssa.org
> 
> that "unknown, i need somhething more specific"is the EXACT error that 
> the Sparc gives me!
> I got it to the point that the console is initialized in the serial 
> port, and I an login, however
> I get a lot of those errors, as listed above, and I am unable to use vi 
> correctly.
> 
> To elaborate:
> 
> when I hit the Up arrow on the terminal (this is both a Wyse RS-232 
> terminal, and a laptop
> running minicom, etc.. )I get the previous command, one line above the 
> same line where I'd
>  expect it to me. Ex:
> 
> if the last command was "fetchmail:"
> 
> Expected:
> [root@localhost /root:#] fetchmail
> 
> received:
>                                         fetchmail
> [root@localhost /root:#]
> 
> Same thing in Vi, etc..
> 
> Hope this helps?

The SPARCstation neither knows nor cares about what, if any, terminal
you are using, so that error message could not be related to that.

So, exactly WHEN do you see the error message?  During boot?  Actually,
i expect that this message might be from *getty, since it's responsible
for display management prior to login and setting the initial value of
the TERM environment variable.

Or it might be bash complaining that it doesn't know how to enable its
special features because the terminal type is one it can't find, i.e.,
"unknown".

Show the output of 'env'.


You need to set your terminal definition to the correct type.  You said
you have a Wyse terminal.  What model?  Is it running native, or in any
sort of emulation mode?  (May be able to enter terminal setup by
pressing "<Shift>-<Select>".  At least that's what my Wyse WY-150
uses.)

For a native Wyse terminal, a good starting point would be:

     export TERM=wyse50    # terminal is Wyse 50 or better.

If your Wyse is emulating a VT100, use:

    export TERM=vt100    # pretty darn generic VT100 or emulation therof.

or use the terminal's setup mode to find out what other terminal yours may
be emulating.

E.g., I have a Wyse model WY-150 hooked up to my office printserver
('486DX33 running OpenBSD in 8MB and 260MB of disk).  Ordinarily, I
have the terminal 'personality' (as Wyse calls it) set to VT-100, but
if I set it to 'WYSE-150', I need to change the terminal type:

    tset -s wyse150  # aliased as wy150, wy120, wyse120

(Actually, there seems to be a problem with the wyse150 termcap entry,
so this fails.  Instead, I can set it for a Wyse 100 with "tset -s
wyse100" and it works well enough--except bash doesn't seem to know how
to use the arrow keys.)


Check your *getty startup line for the console/ttya/etc. for the
appropriate terminal type.  Or set the variable yourself in your
".profile", ".bash_profile", or ".login" file, as appropriate for your
shell.


Files:
    /usr/share/lib/terminfo/*
    /etc/termcap

See also:
    http://www.aplawrence.com/Unixart/terminals.html


Hope this helps.

--
John D. Baker                                  jdbaker(at)blkbox(dot)com
http(colon slash slash)www(dot)blkbox(dot)com(slash tilde)jdbaker(slash)
NetBSD        OpenBSD        Darwin/MacOS X        FreeBSD        BSD/OS
BSD -- The Operating System for the Third Millenium and Beyond!