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From: rhh@ct.picker.com (Randall Hopper)
Message-Id: <199608101605.MAA12722@elmer.picker.com>
Subject: Re: troubles with vi in telnet session
To: amora@obelix.cica.es (Jesus A. Mora Marin)
Date: Sat, 10 Aug 1996 12:05:26 -0400 (EDT)
Cc: questions@freebsd.org
In-Reply-To: <199608080706.JAA09399@obelix.cica.es> from "Jesus A. Mora Marin" at Aug 8, 96 09:06:02 am
Reply-To: rhh@ct.picker.com
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 >This may sound a very stupid question, but I am really stuck. I have installed
 >FreeBSD 2.2 SNAP-960323 on a machine at work. To do something profitable I 
 >telnet to another system running Unixware. I run into trouble when try to
 >edit any file with `vi(1)': it doesn't want to scroll the text and simply 
 >overwrites the new line at bottom. I have tried changing TERM, using new termcap
 >entries from both the remote system and Linux, and messing with `vi' settings,
 >but no luck. May I have missed any point? 
 >Any hint would be highly appreciated. TIA

     This sounds familiar.  If you have your TERM set right (vi uses
terminfo by the way, not termcap, if I remember correctly) and the FreeBSD
specification for that terminal is correct for the terminal on the other
end, the other thing to try is explicitly setting the number of lines for
your terminal in the shell on the other end.

     If the remote box is System-Vish (I think Unixware is), do:

        setenv LINES 50

or however big your terminal is (or "export LINES=50" if you're a ksh/bash
shell user).  If the remote end were BSD-ish, you'd do:

        stty rows 50

Incidentally, if your # columns isn't 80, you might also need to:

        setenv COLUMNS 132     (System V), OR
        stty columns 132       (BSD)

     This might fix your problem.  If it does, its a step forward but it's
a pain to mess with this whenever you log in or change window sizes.

     The better solution (if its open to you) is to get a telnetd for
Unixware that will pass the terminal geometry across the telnet connection
(I'm assuming that Unixware's vi supports window size changes, but that
might be not be true--I've never used Unixware).  You might also try rlogin
instead of telnet.  I use that from home to work, and don't have to mess
with this -- rlogin client, rlogin server, and all my apps on the other end
support dynamic window resizing and renegotiate the terminal size behind
the scenes.

     Hope this helps.

Randall Hopper
rhh@ct.picker.com