*BSD News Article 94221


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From: tedm@portsoft.com
Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc
Subject: Re: Problem with Telnet
Date: 19 Apr 1997 02:08:11 GMT
Organization: Easystreet Online Services
Lines: 42
Message-ID: <5j99eb$kqk$1@easystreet03>
References: <01bc4a2b$50901400$b69fbf82@dan.sdsu.edu> <5j56go$8j1@ui-gate.utell.co.uk>
Reply-To: tedm@portsoft.com
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Xref: euryale.cc.adfa.oz.au comp.unix.bsd.freebsd.misc:39567

In <5j56go$8j1@ui-gate.utell.co.uk>, brian@shift.utell.net (Brian Somers) writes:
>In article <5j4ba0$sjc$2@easystreet03>,
>	tedm@portsoft.com writes:
>> In <01bc4a2b$50901400$b69fbf82@dan.sdsu.edu>, "Joe" <masc0803@rohan.sdsu.edu> writes:
>>>I was wondering if someone could help me solve this problem I just recently
>>>started having with my FreeBSD box.  When I use my win95 box to log into my
>> 
>> Edit your .profile file in your home directory and put the following lines in it:
>> 
>> TERM=vt100
>> export TERM
>
>Eek, no.  Read my other post in this thread.  telnet negotiates the value
>of your TERM variable according to what the client wants.  The client
>should be configured with the correct TERM value, not the server.
>
>The best you should do in a profile is set TERM *only* if it's not
>already set.
>

make the above "already set to what you want"

I frequently use 80,43 with Win95 telnet.  As an example, the more program only
cares what li is set to in /etc/termcap, it ignores the setting of LINES. (which isin't
negotiated by telnet anyway, at least not with windows telnet)  This leads to
rottenness, either I set li in the vt100 entry in /etc/termcap to 43, thus breaking
everyone else, or I create an additional termcap entry such as vt100-43, which
then of course makes the auto-negotiation done by the telnet client worthless.

I've found it's easier to simply override all the auto-negotiation by 
explicitly setting TERM and LINES to what I normally access the system with.
If I'm coming in from an oddball telnet client, it only takes a second to issue
TERM= and LINES= and export commands at the command prompt.

Auto-negotiation is a great idea, but it just doesen't go far enough.  A really
clean login auto-negotiation sequence would have the telnet client or terminal 
passing a complete termcap to the host, which the admin would only override
with /etc/termcap if the host's curses package was broken in some manner.
Unfortunately back in the dark ages when we all used terminals, the terminal
makers pushed everyone into this unsatisfactory pointer scheme.

Ted