screen 4.0.2

[KPS]

I have just installed a screen-4.0.2 depot on my HP-UX 11.11 server. (on a rp-3410) I downloaded the depot from the HP-UX Porting Center.

It installs fine without any issues, but after the install I go to run it and I get the following message:

#>screen
Cannot find terminfo entry for 'vt100'.

#>

Would anyone have any ideas on what I have to do additionally to get this working?

Thanks in advance,
KPS

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

thats a pretty common terminal type.

Maybe check the doc and try TERM=vt220 or TERM=hp or something.

swverify \*

Make sure the install went correctly.

Check the PATH and SHLIB_PATH variables.

vt100 works under other contexts such as ssh/telnet?

SEP

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Many (most, all?) of the utilities found on the HP-UX Porting Centree are compiled/linked with the Gnu tools and as such install libraries such as Ncurses in non-standard locations.

Almost certainly you have a terminfo entry for a vt100 on your box. To make certain, cd to /usr/lib/terminfo/v and ls -l vt100.

If found, we just need to tell your application where to look for the terminfo database (it's probably looking in /usr/local now).

export TERMINFO=/usr/lib/terminfo

Now start your application.

[KPS]

All went okay with the swinstall and swverify of the screen depot that I installed shows no errors.

I tried using a Term type of vt200 and hp and I get the same message, but for those TERM types.

I also tried exporting the path to /usr/lib/terminfo/v and no symptoms change.

Thanks for your suggestions, but I'm still stuck on this I'm afraid..

[A. Clay Stephenson]

One doesn't set TERMINFO to /usr/lib/terminfo/v but to /usr/lib/terminfo. The subdirectory is inferred from the first letter of the TERM variable.

Normally, ncurses expects the terminfo database to be in /usr/share/terminfo so you can probably make a symbolic link from /usr/lib/terminfo to /usr/share/terminfo.

[KPS]

Okay so we have our path exported to:
/usr/lib/terminfo

After doing this, we're still getting:

"Cannot find terminfo entry for 'vt100'"

I also checked for the symbolic link and we are already linked form /usr/lib/terminfo to /usr/share/lib/terminfo

[A. Clay Stephenson · Accepted solution]

After doing a Googlew search on your error message, it appears that that is a bug in screen under HP-UX possibly because screen expects an ncurses terminfo entry. If I have a little spare time, I may download the source and try to compile it to see what happens.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Okay, it took me less than 5 minutes to download, untar, configure, and make screen and now it works using the HP-UX curses library. The .depot version might work if run against an ncurses terminfo database --- but that is a guess. The real answer is to download the source and build it yourself. I have the ANSI/C and aCC compilers loaded on my Sandbox and that makes things easier. If all you have is the Bundled C Compiler then you will first need to download and install the Gnu c (gcc) compiler plus utilities.

[A. Clay Stephenson]

I have found that I can emulate the behavior by linking with libcurses rather than libtermcap. Libtermcap uses curses to emulate the old termcap routines. The code will actually link using libcurses but it will display exactly your error; if I link with libtermcap (the default after running configure on my box), all is well.

[KPS]

I really appreciate your effort in researching this problem.

So I think you have a fix, but I don't quite follow you on the links I need to change here.

Could you please describe what links need to be changed and I can make the changes necessary to see if this works?


Thanks again for everything!

KPS

[A. Clay Stephenson]

It's really very simple. Download the source and gunzip it.

Assuming that you download it (binary FTP) to /var/tmp.
gunzip screen-XXXX.tar.gz

Next untar it.
tar xvf screen-XXX.tar

cd screen-XXX.tar
./configure

Next edit Makefile and comment out the line
CPPFLAGS=xxx/yyy/zzz/ncurses.h (unless you have actually installed ncurses) by preceding it with '#'. Save the file and 'make'. The build will begin.

Assuming all went well,
'make install'

and finally
cd terminfo
tic screeninfo.src (installs the 'screen' entries in the terminfo database)

[A. Clay Stephenson]

Ooops,
cd screen-XXX.tar
should be
cd screen-XXX

[KPS]

Bingo, everything works fine!

Thanks once again so much for all your help. Going with the non-depot version really helped here.

Thanks,
KPS

[KPS]

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