Re: termcap/terminfo (NIC)

["Jay 'Eraserhead' Felice" <eraserhead@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Fri, May 18, 2001 at 10:01:31AM -0400, Sean Porterfield wrote:
> First off: Jason, thanks for that explanation of how keys are interpreted.
> I'm still a bit fuzzy, but it's not as much like black magic as it used to
> seem.

I need to do better, I think, at that description.  It is a bit of a rough
topic.

> 
> Now, I finally got around to playing with my NIC again (that's from
> http://www.thinknic.com for those who don't know.)  I couldn't get tn5250 to
> run in my first tests, so I added an xterm so I could run commands and see
> the errors produced.

Kewl.  I wish I had time to play with mine.

> 
> If I run tn5250 without parameters, it prints out the help info as expected.
> However, if I provide an IP address or hostname, I get an error.  Sadly, I'm
> not near the NIC at this time, but the error was something like "unable to
> open xterm"
> 
> I thought it meant it couldn't run xterm, which was odd since I was in xterm
> running it.  Then I typed `TERM=5250` and ran tn5250 with my hostname
> parameter.  Then I got and error telling me it couldn't open tn5250.  So,
> that tells me it's the terminfo or termcap that it's having trouble with.

You know what, maybe it's looking for the `xterm' termcap entry.  Make sure
you are doing `export TERM' after `TERM=5250'.

> 
> Do I need to rebuild a database after adding the term entry?  Or is it
> trying to open read/write which is not possible on a CD?

You have to compile terminfo entries and install them.  termcap entries do
not need to be compiled in any way.

> 
> I tried logging a trace file, but it only put two lines in it which didn't
> seem very helpful.

Yeah, this is one of the first things it does.

> 
> If the term file really needs to be read/write (why?) I could try to
> relocate it to flash instead of CD.  Where would I find what is trying to
> open the term entry?

Get a copy of `strace', read the man page, and insert it into the loop to make
a logfile somehow.

Like:

strace -o /tmp/slime /path/to/tn5250 other args

/tmp/slime will show all the system calls the program made, the ones of
interest will be open() calls - both what files it's looking for and the
mode it's trying to open them will be listed.


> 
> Thanks!
> Sean
> 

-Jay 'Eraserhead' Felice
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