This code in /etc/profile and .profile has been deprecated for years. First, the value of $TERM is often set by a totally unrelated system through the protocol (ie, telnet subcodes). So TERM might be set to "linux" or "hp" but with no relationship to your HP-UX system and the contents of the terminfo database in /usr/lib/terminfo. This profile code was written in the late 80's when all the systems that talked to each other (ie, no Linux, etc) were HP-UX.
The second problem is the 20 year old tset command that is lousy at identifying terminals (well, today they are emulators). So the fix is to *SCRAP ALL* of that code starting at the
if [ "$TERM" ]
or
if [ -z "$TERM" ]
and replace it with this simple incantation:
eval $(ttytype -s)
ttytype will identify ancient and modern terminals (and emulators) by using the 3 major categories of terminal family (Wyse, HP and VT/ANSI) model queries. You'll see the the queries as they timeout (1 sec each) when you run the command manually:
# ttytype -s
TERM='vt100'; export TERM;
LINES=24; export LINES;
COLUMNS=80; export COLUMNS;
ERASE='^?'; export ERASE;
And if the use of scummy csh is not optional, the code looks exactly the same for csh.login:
eval $(ttytype -s)
Now all will be well through network logins. And although ttytype is a great tool, the man page still has the obsolete test for $TERM already set. ALWAYS test the terminal at login and never hardcode TERM=something unless ttytype -s cannot identify your device.
Oops: Enter the GSP and MP.
Prior to the GSP/MP interface to the system hardware (ie, the classic console), ttytype worked flawlessly. But with very questionable designs in the GSP/MP code, cursor controls (and thus terminal compatibility issues) crept in (vfp is an example). But the GSP/MP could not automatically identify the terminal so two hardcoded settings were part of the GSP/MP, hp and vt100. So far so good as long as the console device matched the hardcoded GSP/MP setting.
But somewhere around 10.20/11.00 releases, the ttytype (and tset) code was changed to stop querying the console device and instead hardcode TERM to the GSP/MP value. So regardless of the type of terminal connected to the console, it is now ignored. I am sure the designers were trying to accommodate multiple connections through the LAN interface, but this would have been unnecessary if special escape sequences (cursor control, clear screen, etc) were dropped in favor of POA (Plain Old ASCII).
So we're stuck with a special case for all console connections. While I love the smart terminal features of the HP terminals and hpterm (upon which the PCL printer language is based), the momentum of the truly dumb terminal vt100 is too pervasive so it's time to drop real HP terminals (and emulators such as QCTerm and Reflection/HP) and lose the 2-line softkey labels and plethora of character enhancements. This recommendation is only for sysadmins that must by necessity be connected to the real console. Normal users can always run Wyse, HP, Tektronix, whatever on non-console connections.
So set all your GSP/MP interfaces to vt100 and adopt a smart vt100 emulator such as PuTTY. There are many "vt100" emulators out there, some are very expensive and some (like PuTTY) are free. In conjunction with a PuTTY config manager, you can easily handle hundreds of machines and the occasional DEL vs BS issue which is resolved in PuTTY settings.
Bill Hassell, sysadmin
