Properly Configuring Terminal Emulation in Unix?

Jobe_br asks: "I've recently come across a need for a way of connecting to a SCO Unix box with full SCO-ANSI emulation (so that I can send F1-F12 commands and ASCII line art appears as lines, not strange foreign letters). After checking out the Terminal-HOWTO at linuxdoc.org I came away with no clearer understanding of what I need to do. I can pretty much pick any 'ole terminal emulator for win32 and get what I need, but no matter what I do to fiddle with my xterms/eterms/vts I can't get things to go. Is this not facilitated under Linux?"

Comments

I had this problem too

[wang33]

We had this problem too at work, our solution run CRT in wine. It was a pain to configure but works really well now after some trouble shooting. Found one other package that claims to do what you want out of the box but couldn't even get the software to run for me, it was from Pericom-Software.com. Crappy install and just all around seems like pretty poor software but your mileage may vary.

Re:I had this problem too

[Marc Boucher]

our solution run CRT

I'm running SCRT under windoze to access my linux Firewall. I had to edit the keymap to have it work correctly with the F1-F10 keys. But I'm still having problem with many keys. Can you help me with this?
I'm using mc to browse-edit-start. I still can't use CTRL+ENTER to copy the file name in the command line. CTRL-PGUP, CTRL-PGDN, KeyPad+, KeyPad-, are keys impossible to pass correctly.

A more broader question. Does anyone know what is the syntax used to pass all these control keys from the terminal to the server? CTRL keys, ALT keys... Is there a prefix code? one code for the control key + one code for the key, ESC-encoded or not?

You might try this

[xiox]

Found this on google.

Re:You might try this

[ksheff]

After getting the correct termcap entries, to make xterm have the correct function key mappings, you can put the following in your ~/.Xdefaults file if you are going to use the scoansi terminal type:

SCOTerm.vt100.translations:#override\
<Key>F1: string(0x1b) string("[M")\n\
<Key>F2: string(0x1b) string("[N")\n\
<Key>F3: string(0x1b) string("[O")\n\
<Key>F4: string(0x1b) string("[P")\n\
<Key>F5: string(0x1b) string("[Q")\n\
<Key>F6: string(0x1b) string("[R")\n\
<Key>F7: string(0x1b) string("[S")\n\
<Key>F8: string(0x1b) string("[T")\n\
<Key>F9: string(0x1b) string("[U")\n\
<Key>F10: string(0x1b) string("[V")\n

When you run an xterm that you want to have those keybindings, just run it as xterm -name SCOTerm. If you need to send different function key sequences, look at the /etc/termcap or the terminfo stuff to determine what the function keys are to send.

Re:You might try this

[ksheff]

From what I was able to figure out from previous posts, I can copy termcap files from linux->SCO so that SCO recognizes my linux console - at that point, I'd be using a 'linux' or 'linux-console' terminal type, right?

From what I understand, it would describe to the programs that use the termcap/terminfo the capabilities of the terminal being used. Some of this included the byte sequences to make the terminal do a particular function, other parts include what byte sequences the terminal sends when the user presses a special key or some other operation. If you were to copy the section of the termcap file with the linux console to your SCO machine, the programs on the SCO machine should be able to 'do the right thing' when you are logging into the SCO machine from the linux console.

This doesn't help you if you intend on using xterm. According to the manual page:

Termcap(5) entries that work with xterm include ``xterm,'' ``vt102,'' ``vt100'' and ``ansi,'' and xterm automatically searches the termcap file in this order for these entries and then sets the ``TERM'' and the ``TERMCAP'' environment variables.

If you have a terminal definition that is like vt100/ansi, but has extra or different definitions for terminal function keys, then you can force the setting of the TERM variable to the terminal definition that you want to use and then use the ~/.Xdefaults settings to force xterm to send different byte sequences for the function keys. However, one can't just pick any old terminal definition and expect it to work if it is very different from the actual terminal. It would be like hanging a sign that says "Ich spreche den Deutsch"(from babelfish) on someone that doesn't speak German and expect them to carry on a conversation in German.

Most Windows terminal programs emulate ansi/vt100/vt102 and allow one to edit the key mappings. If you can get something like this to work from Windows, then you should be able to configure xterm to use the same byte sequences for the function keys.

Re:How to figure out key translation ?

[RGRistroph]

Sure it does. It does a lot more, but it definitely does that. Look at the What is Kermit page and do a page search on "terminal emulation."

A "terminal" is a keyboard and monitor (or in the old days, a teletype machine (that's where "tty" comes from), basically a keyboard and line printer) with a wire connection to a host computer. For each such piece of hardware built, there was a protocol for how the host computer could tell the screen what to display and what bytes would be sent with each keystroke. (Actually some terminals allowed you edit an entire line and then send it at once.)

When I take one computer and hook it to another with a piece of wire, the software that causes the first computer to send exactly the same things to make it look like the terminal hardware is on the other end is naturally enough called a "terminal emulator."

You can take an old PDP11, disconnect it's vt220 or vt100 terminal, hook up the wire to a computer instead, run kermit connected to that port, tell kermit to pretend to be a vt100 or vt220 or whatever, and the PDP11 should not be able to figure out that there isn't a real hardware terminal on the other end.

These days you don't have to have a separate hardware port for each terminal, you can connect many at once via Linux's virtual terminals or networks or whatever.

I had (possibly this) problem with AIX.

[BocaLoca]

I had a similar problem with AIX. If you do a CTRL^Left-Click (of an xterm), you will see the option 'Old Function-Keys'. --try it

If it works, then add this line to your ~/.Xdefaults file:

XTerm*oldXtermFKeys: true