[ On Tuesday, May 16, 2000 at 09:36:10 (+0200), Manuel Bouyer wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: misc/10127: port i386 /etc/ttys says vt220 instead of wsvt25
>
> On Tue, May 16, 2000 at 12:07:17AM -0400, perry@piermont.com wrote:
> > 
> > >Fix:
> > 	It isn't clear if we should or shouldn't change this, but we
> > 	probably should. The fix would be to (trivially) change the
> > 	default ttys files.
> 
> The problem is that is you rlogin/telnet/ssh to another system which
> doesn't know about wsvt25, you loose (I've hated the linux 'xterm-color' hack
> because of this). I'd say leave vt220 which is known by most systems and
> explain in the FAQ how to switch to wsvt25

That's not a problem.  You should copy the full terminal definition over
to the "losing" system, and use it -- you'll get the best of both worlds!

This is something that people using terminals to connect to Unix hosts
have done for many years -- only recently with the proliferation of X11
has much of this been hidden from many users courtesy the universal
applicability of a common "xterm" terminal type.

"xterm-color" isn't a hack -- it's a different kind of terminal -- the
"hack" is that it happens to support a subset of commands as described
by the "xterm" terminal type and thus it allows users of that terminal
type be able to use it when connecting to systems that don't have a full
"xterm-color" definition in their terminal capabilities database.  Such
users still have to change their terminal type to "xterm" on remote
systems though (as you've discovered! ;-)....

So, alternately you could examine existing available terminal types on
the remote system to see if one is a proper subset of the NetBSD console
emulation and choose that type either before or after you connect to the
remote system.  You could also use a terminal emulator, such as screen,
to mediate your terminal type with the remote system.  You can do either
of these things in a "wrapper" script/alias/function.

-- 
							Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098      VE3TCP      <gwoods@acm.org>      <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>