From owner-freebsd-questions Sat Mar 1 15:59:09 1997 Return-Path: Received: (from root@localhost) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) id PAA05189 for questions-outgoing; Sat, 1 Mar 1997 15:59:09 -0800 (PST) Received: from mailhost1.cac.washington.edu (mailhost1.cac.washington.edu [140.142.32.2]) by freefall.freebsd.org (8.8.5/8.8.5) with ESMTP id PAA05184 for ; Sat, 1 Mar 1997 15:59:07 -0800 (PST) Received: from s5-25-199.student.washington.edu (S5-25-199.student.washington.edu [128.95.25.199]) by mailhost1.cac.washington.edu (8.8.4+UW96.12/8.8.4+UW96.12) with SMTP id PAA03932 for ; Sat, 1 Mar 1997 15:59:05 -0800 Message-ID: <3318C2C5.685C@u.washington.edu> Date: Sat, 01 Mar 1997 15:59:01 -0800 From: Jason Wells Organization: (soon to be) Highperformance.net X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.0Gold (Win95; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Terminals and environments Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Sender: owner-questions@freebsd.org X-Loop: FreeBSD.org Precedence: bulk This tends to be two questions in one. I gather that they are closely related, therefore they both appear in one posting. Pointing me to the correct resource will be much appreciated. I seem to be reading in circles on the topic of terminal types and the users environment. I am a bash user. As I understand (misunderstand?) things. Please correct me if need be. tty = terminal type or terminal device. Init starts a terminal via getty for login. tty is connected (for lack of a better word) to the standard input. After login the the users login file (.profile in my case) can be used to set the terminal type. My environment is established entirely by my .profile. (I am suspicous that this is false.) If I have my keyboard plugged in that is all that is necessary for having input processed correctly. (I suspect this to be false as well.) Having said the above here are my troubles. My environment somehow changes when I start X using startx. I noticed this because my aliases that I established in my .profile no longer function. By what mechanism is my environment changed when I start X? I seem to be stumbling upon some arbitrary changes of environment. I doubt however that the change is arbitrary but is determined by some code that is unknown to me. What actions does a user perform that end up resulting in a change of environment? More specifically, are there events other than login that change my environment without my knowing that my environment is being changed? When I telnet to my university account I am able to login. After login some commands execute and some commands return "unknown terminal type: cons25." I guess that I have to set some terminal type in my environment. How do I change the type of terminal that I use? What actions does a user perform that result in a change of terminal type? How do I get my delete key to delete the current character position instead of the previous character position? Perhaps this is a DOS-ism but dammit that is how the delete should work. This little detail causes me mucho aggravation. -- __ __ / 0\ / 0\ Thank you * Highperformance.net ) Wannabe Sysadmin * The homeless domain )-------( Jason Wells * "Pardon me sir, spare some bandwidth?" \_____/