GNU Screen with no Wuff! on Mac OS X
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:Posted: 2008-08-11 15:47
:Tags: Debian, Mac OS X

I've switched back from Ubuntu to Mac OS X again. The lack of hardware support was just too frustrating (eg: touchpad without right click, having to reboot to use the CD-ROM, dual screen not working properly, keyboard maps incorrect, no microphone etc) so I instead decided to try to fix some of the problems which made me unhappy with Mac OS X in the first place. The main one is the inability to use GNU Screen with the Terminal because it gives Wuff! messages.

This is actually easy to fix as described here:

http://www.dansanderson.com/blog/2004/07/newbie-linuxmac.html

Full background information is described here:

http://www.ibb.net/~anne/keyboard.html

The tip is duplicated below:

Terminal uses "xterm-color" as its TERM, which, in my Debian Etch installation, had undesired (but common) values for kbs (backspace) and kdch1 (delete). I was able to fix it with:

1. Log in to the affected Linux box.
2. ``echo $TERM`` to confirm the terminfo setting. (Mac OS X Terminal should be using xterm-color.)
3. ``infocmp >xterm-color``
4. Edit ``xterm-color``, find ``kbs`` and make sure it reads ``kbs=\177``, and find ``kdch1`` and make sure it reads ``kdch1=\E[3~``. Save.
5. ``mkdir -p ~/.terminfo/x``
6. Temporarily set the ``TERMINFO`` environment variable to ``~/.terminfo``. In bash/zsh: ``export TERMINFO=~/.terminfo``
7. Test-compile the new terminfo file: ``tic xterm-color`` If successful, ``~/.terminfo/x/xterm-color`` will be the compiled terminfo file.
8. ``unset TERMINFO``
9. If desired, back up the original compiled terminfo file. Look for it as ``/etc/terminfo/x/xterm-color`` or ``/usr/lib/terminfo/x/xterm-color``.
10. Run ``tic xterm-color`` again as root (using su or sudo) to compile and install the new version in the official location. 

I've tested this and it seems to work well.