Keyboard mapping/translation -- LINUX5250




Hi all

First of all, congrats on the latest release (0.13.13) which I haven't
managed to break yet :-) I've been getting the session lock and half a
screen in the earlier versions (though not from a second signon, just
exiting from certain applications) but that problem seems to gone away.
Cheers.

My main problem, as a newbie to Linux, is getting the function keys,
backspace, delete, etc to work right. I've followed the instructions in the
README, but a tic 5250.terminfo and loadkeys uk5250.map still don't do the
trick. In a standard xterm with xt5250, F5 to F12 work as expected, F1 to
F4, and F13 - F24 don't. If I use the Meta key sequence (M-1 through M-+)
then they work, with the exception of F14 & F15. I get a beep (as if it's
an invalid key) but nothing else. I've tried on a number of screen that use
those keys (SEU, WRKSPLF, plus some of our own applications) and it's the
same for all. If I'm running tn5250 at the console, then F1-F20 work, but
not F21-F24 (using the F keys or M-( to M-+ ).  Getting backspace & delete
to work is also proving difficult (though delete works fine if run in kvt,
rather than an xterm).

I used Bill Suetholz's tip of using vi to check what my F-keys are sending,
and pressing shift has no effect - F1 gives the same sequence as shift F1.
I did notice that the sequences for F1 to F5 in the 5250.terminfo file were
different to those I get from vi. I changed them and ran the tic command
again, but it made no difference. Could anyone give me some pointers on
where to try next. I don't mind digging around, but at the moment I don't
know where to start digging :-( It's a bit like finishing the ATS courses I
did for the AS/400 (S/38 at that time) and wondering where to start, with
so much available, but not knowing how to tie it together.

One of the other threads (Jason's "Insider Weekly Interview") on this list
was on what people use Linux for in relation to the AS/400. Well, we have a
couple of AS/400s (production & development), a couple of  hundred PC's
running a mixture Win3.11 & Win95,  around 75 dumb terminals, and more
recently a  dozen or so IBM NetStations and Citrix terminal server (for
Client Access, MS Office & Lotus Notes) with 30 users so far. We have one
(1) Linux box and that's my PC :-) I've been trying to see just what's
possible using Linux as an alternative to the above list, and Ron
Colcernian's diskless workstation project looks very interesting. I
currently use Citrix's ICA client to get AS/400 access (in both Win95 &
Linux), but native access from a more reliable OS would be great. With the
recent release of Sun's Star Office package for free commercial use, using
Linux as an alternative to the various methods above is looking better all
the time.

If there's anyone who's gone forward with Linux in this kind of setup, I'd
like to hear from you. I'd particularly like to here from anyone who can
help me get file access to our AS/400 - smbclient only shows me part of the
IFS on our production machine, and nothing on our dev box (actually locks
up my linux box if I try to acess the mount point).

Thanks for your time

Regards, Martin

BTW, I'm running Mandrake 6.0, with KDE.


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