From owner-freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG Mon May 29 06:46:26 2006 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 1A99C16A899 for ; Mon, 29 May 2006 06:46:26 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from shurd@sasktel.net) Received: from misav02.sasknet.sk.ca (misav09.sasknet.sk.ca [142.165.20.173]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 3AE1D43D48 for ; Mon, 29 May 2006 06:46:25 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from shurd@sasktel.net) Received: from bgmpomr2.sasknet.sk.ca ([142.165.72.23]) by misav09 with InterScan Messaging Security Suite; Mon, 29 May 2006 00:46:24 -0600 Received: from [192.168.0.193] ([142.165.59.202]) by bgmpomr2.sasknet.sk.ca (SaskTel eMessaging Service) with ESMTPA id <0J0000J84LHBW570@bgmpomr2.sasknet.sk.ca> for freebsd-questions@freebsd.org; Mon, 29 May 2006 00:46:24 -0600 (CST) Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 00:46:22 -0600 From: Stephen Hurd In-reply-to: <447A94BA.9000302@infracaninophile.co.uk> To: Matthew Seaman Message-id: <447A98BE.6030700@sasktel.net> MIME-version: 1.0 Content-type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-15; format=flowed Content-transfer-encoding: 7BIT References: <004101c6810c$edeeaaf0$5200a8c0@backoffice> <447A8B42.2060901@sasktel.net> <447A94BA.9000302@infracaninophile.co.uk> User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; FreeBSD i386; en-US; rv:1.8.0.1) Gecko/20060413 SeaMonkey/1.0 Cc: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Custom termcap entries and installworld X-BeenThere: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: User questions List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Mon, 29 May 2006 06:46:33 -0000 Matthew Seaman wrote: > I think you're not going to have much luck here. Custom termcap entries > are not something that most FreeBSD users deal with and consequently there > does not seem to be any useful mechanism established for managing them. > Hrm... maybe if I raise a big enough stink termcap can be installed in /etc, managed by mergemaster, and everyone will go away happy... me because I have what I want and everyone else because I finalyl shut up. ;-) > The curses(3X) man page seems to be they key reference. Particularly > the section on environment variables: TERM, TERMCAP, TERMPATH. It does > also mention the possibility of using ${HOME}/.termcap to hold supplementary > termcap entries. However, these man pages are rather confusing: many of them > talk about terminfo(5) in terms of 'it is going to replace termcap(5) any > day now'. But terminfo(5) is a SysV-ism and supported only as a compatibility > thing under FreeBSD. > I'm fairly certain that anything the curses man pages have to say on the topic is wrong (and I dare you to read the terminfo manpage - it's been dead on my system for some time... but that's Ok, since it's not applicable). I believe that *BSD is the only platform using termcap with ncurses left on the planet. I use termcap(5) as my primary source, but have a firm belief that the last two thirds of the "CAVEATS AND BUGS" section is completely wrong. > Most people will be perfectly happy with the default termcap database -- so > long as it provides xterm / vt100 and cons25 almost all situations are covered. > Yeah. > For your purposes if using environment variables to achieve your ends turns out > not to be workable, then I'd suggest keeping a backup copy of your customised > termcap somewhere where system updates won't overwrite it -- keeping it > in CVS or similar would be a good move -- and writing yourself a little > script to merge in your changes to /usr/share/misc/termcap and then re-run > 'cap_mkdb /usr/share/misc/termcap' after a system update. I've a feeling that > /etc/termcap is there mostly for historical compatibility now-adays. > *nod* I've done a basic hack now and plastered stickynotes on all my systems with dumb terminals. We'll see how well that system works out. :-) I haven't yet found a way to use env variables (and haven't futzed around with ~/.termcap yet) with entries in /etc/ttys I suspect it won't work but I won't know until I beat myself to death with them.