Debian bug report logs - #1645 termcap Package: ncurses-developer ; Reported by: Ian Jackson ; 20 days old. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From cus.cam.ac.uk!iwj10 Fri Oct 13 06:03:18 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3jld-0002G3C; Fri, 13 Oct 95 06:03 PDT Received: from bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA01087 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Fri, 13 Oct 1995 06:01:18 -0700 Received: by bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk (Smail-3.1.29.0 #36) id m0t3jfx-000C0ZC; Fri, 13 Oct 95 13:57 BST Received: by chiark id (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.33); Fri, 13 Oct 95 13:22 BST Message-Id: Date: Fri, 13 Oct 95 13:22 BST From: Ian Jackson To: "Eric S. Raymond" Cc: debian-bugs@Pixar.com, "Zeyd M. Ben-Halim" Subject: Re: Bug#1645: termcap In-Reply-To: References: Eric S. Raymond writes ("Re: Bug#1645: termcap "): > Hmmm. Ctrl-Z problem? Please explain. We had a bug involving ^Z in some > older versions, but I think it's fixed now. dselect, our package selection program, does (basically) the following: initscr(); ... lots of (n)curses stuff, user makes menu selections, &c ... ... user selects menu option to run some program ... clear(); refresh(); endwin(); ignore SIGQUIT, SIGINT, SIGHUP (sigaction(...,{SIG_IGN},&save)) fork/exec a subprocess waitpid(pid,&status,0); restore SIGQUIT, SIGINT, SIGHUP (sigaction(...,&save,)) sleep(1) initscr(); ... go back into ncurses ... If you hit ^Z while the subprocess is running (the subprocess takes around a second) it seems to work only some of the time if at all. Often ^Z has no effect at all; other times it works once but not the second time you try it; sometimes it appears to get you back into dselect somehow and leaves (presumably) a stuck subprocess around. What I think it ought to do is background the whole assembly of dselect and its subprocess. (Come to think of it, I don't think I should be ignoring SIGHUP. I'll remove it from the list of signals-to-be-ignored.) > I'm not sure I have the attributions straight here. If you'll send me the > conXY entries, I'll put them in the terminfo master. I think that would probably be a bad idea. They're obsolete, Linux-specific and generally very horrible. Bruce ? > OK, I wasn't clear on that. Bruce, you guys have good karma with me (and > I expect with Zeyd, too) because you've provided quite a few high-quality > bug reports (precise, replicable, etc) that we've been able to use to > improve the package. If there is anything we can do in the way of package > reorganizing, more or different makefile scaffolding, documentation, or > whatever, to make the Debian build process cleaner, please don't be shy > about making suggestions. Speaking personally as the main person using ncurses directly in a specifically-for-Debian program, the best thing you can do for me is to fix bugs :-). > I have one question that may relate to this. A lot of the older terminfo > entries in the latter half of the master file (after the cut mark) are > just junk from the P.O.V, of linux users (who's gonna hook up a netronics > or an exidy 2500 to a linux box at this late date?). They take up what > might be considered a substantial amount of space on smaller systems > (the whole tree is 1293 blocks on my machine and I'm sure somewhere between > half and three-quarters of that is old entries). > > I've been thinking about doing something about this but am not sure it's > worth the effort. I'm not clear on whether the disk space savings from being > selective are worth the slight additional installation complexity. > > Would it be a net win for you if we: > > 1. Provided a configuration option to only install the newer entries in the > first half of the file? > > 2. Provided some interactive Perl thingy for culling out the terminfo tree > after compilation? > > 3. Did something else clever at the cost of giving you more > default-configuration decisions to make: (fill in the blank here) Bruce, is it worth us putting really obscure terminals into a separate .deb package ? I've been thinking that `ncurses-runtime' is a bad package name. I think `terminfo-data' would be a better one. We could have `terminfo-base' for the minimal terminfo on the base disks, and then if you wanted a separate package you could have `terminfo-obscure'. Ian. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Ian Jackson : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1645 ; Package ncurses-developer . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From pixar.com!bruce Thu Oct 12 23:32:32 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3dfT-0005nTC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 23:32 PDT Received: from mongo.pixar.com by pixar.com with SMTP id AA14216 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for bruce@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:32:09 -0700 Received: by mongo.pixar.com (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3dcv-0005nTC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 23:29 PDT Message-Id: To: "Eric S. Raymond" Cc: Bruce Perens , Ian Jackson , debian-bugs@Pixar.com, "Zeyd M. Ben-Halim" Subject: Re: Bug#1645: termcap In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 13 Oct 1995 01:43:01 PDT." Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:29:52 -0700 From: Bruce Perens >> These should be the same as "linux" except for the rows and cols... >> con80x29 con80x30 con80x32 con80x34 con80x43 con80x44 con80x50 con80x60 >> con80x66 con132x25 con132x28 con132x29 con132x30 con132x32 con132x43 >> con132x44 con132x50 con132x60 con100x27 con100x37 con100x40 con100x42 >> con100x43 con100x60 con100x75 con160x50 con160x64 > Bletch, what a huge pile of nearly pointless entries. Bletch indeed. The kernel sets up the VGA console at these various resolutions, depending on the capabilities of the VGA board and user selection. The kernel then passes these terminal types to init. There are actually more possible ones, but these are what termcap supports on Debian. Linux 1.3 reports its terminal type as "linux". Linux 1.2 uses the above crap. 1.3 is still a development kernel, and is not at all stable. > Details? [regarding the manual stuff] I'll Debian-ize the new release after it comes out on Friday, and let you see the result. The man program we are using is "man_db". Thanks Bruce ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Bruce Perens : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1645 ; Package ncurses-developer . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From locke.ccil.org!esr Thu Oct 12 22:16:57 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3cUK-000BeVC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 22:16 PDT Received: from locke.ccil.org ([205.164.136.88]) by pixar.com with SMTP id AA10166 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for bruce@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 22:16:32 -0700 Received: (esr@localhost) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) id BAA04449; Fri, 13 Oct 1995 01:43:02 -0400 Date: Fri, 13 Oct 1995 01:43:01 -0400 (EDT) From: "Eric S. Raymond" Subject: Re: Bug#1645: termcap To: Bruce Perens Cc: Ian Jackson , Bruce Perens , debian-bugs@Pixar.com, "Zeyd M. Ben-Halim" In-Reply-To: Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Thu, 12 Oct 1995, Bruce Perens wrote: > These should be the same as "linux" except for the rows and cols... > con80x29 con80x30 con80x32 con80x34 con80x43 con80x44 con80x50 con80x60 > con80x66 con132x25 con132x28 con132x29 con132x30 con132x32 con132x43 > con132x44 con132x50 con132x60 con100x27 con100x37 con100x40 con100x42 > con100x43 con100x60 con100x75 con160x50 con160x64 Bletch, what a huge pile of nearly pointless entries. These names look mechanically generated. What's the history behind them? What program(s) or kernel(s) set them up, and why do they matter? Are they considered obsolete? (I'd like to put an explanation in the header comment before the entries themselves.) > The biggest hassle so far is that we rename all manual entries from > ncurses_foo.3 to foo.3ncurses, to fit the capabilities of the man program. > Making it easier to configure the man pages (and their contents - they have > a lot of references to other man pages in the ncurses system) to fit in this > name space would be nice. I'll have comments on building ncurses ELF shared > libraries once we do the ELF switch. I could add a production `debian-rename' that would do this mapping. It would be nice if I could refer to the man program involved in a comment near the production, and perhaps put in a bit of information about the nonstandard shape of its document tree. Details? > Eric, are you going to the Hacker's Conference this year? I'll probably go. Can't afford it. Wrong side of the continent and plane fare is expensive just now. :-( Eric S. Raymond ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to "Eric S. Raymond" : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1645 ; Package ncurses-developer . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From pixar.com!bruce Thu Oct 12 21:24:38 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3bfi-000B1TC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 21:24 PDT Received: from mongo.pixar.com by pixar.com with SMTP id AA07586 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for bruce@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 21:24:13 -0700 Received: by mongo.pixar.com (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3bcq-000B28C; Thu, 12 Oct 95 21:21 PDT Message-Id: To: "Eric S. Raymond" Cc: Ian Jackson , Bruce Perens , debian-bugs@Pixar.com, "Zeyd M. Ben-Halim" Subject: Re: Bug#1645: termcap In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:50:01 PDT." Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 21:21:39 -0700 From: Bruce Perens > Hmmm. Ctrl-Z problem? Please explain. We had a bug involving ^Z in some > older versions, but I think it's fixed now. Ian's going to have to explain this one, as I haven't gotten to look at it yet. > I'm not sure I have the attributions straight here. If you'll send me the > conXY entries, I'll put them in the terminfo master. These should be the same as "linux" except for the rows and cols... con80x29 con80x30 con80x32 con80x34 con80x43 con80x44 con80x50 con80x60 con80x66 con132x25 con132x28 con132x29 con132x30 con132x32 con132x43 con132x44 con132x50 con132x60 con100x27 con100x37 con100x40 con100x42 con100x43 con100x60 con100x75 con160x50 con160x64 > Bruce, you guys have good karma with me (and > I expect with Zeyd, too) because you've provided quite a few high-quality > bug reports (precise, replicable, etc) that we've been able to use to > improve the package. The bug reports are all Ian Jackson's work. In truth I haven't had much time to do anything but compile ncurses, because I'm busy with other parts of Debian. I continue to do that so that Ian has more time to spend on "dselect". > If there is anything we can do in the way of package > reorganizing, more or different makefile scaffolding, documentation, or > whatever, to make the Debian build process cleaner, please don't be shy > about making suggestions. The biggest hassle so far is that we rename all manual entries from ncurses_foo.3 to foo.3ncurses, to fit the capabilities of the man program. Making it easier to configure the man pages (and their contents - they have a lot of references to other man pages in the ncurses system) to fit in this name space would be nice. I'll have comments on building ncurses ELF shared libraries once we do the ELF switch. Eric, are you going to the Hacker's Conference this year? I'll probably go. Bruce ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Bruce Perens : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1645 ; Package ncurses-developer . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From locke.ccil.org!esr Thu Oct 12 20:24:45 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3ajk-000ADkC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 20:24 PDT Received: from locke.ccil.org ([205.164.136.88]) by pixar.com with SMTP id AA04169 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 20:24:12 -0700 Received: (esr@localhost) by locke.ccil.org (8.6.9/8.6.10) id XAA01776; Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:50:04 -0400 Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 23:50:01 -0400 (EDT) From: "Eric S. Raymond" Subject: Re: Bug#1645: termcap To: Ian Jackson Cc: Bruce Perens , debian-bugs@Pixar.com, "Zeyd M. Ben-Halim" In-Reply-To: Message-Id: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII On Fri, 13 Oct 1995, Ian Jackson wrote: > Bruce Perens writes ("Re: Bug#1645: termcap "): > > iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk said: > > > It should either shut up or not look in /etc/termcap at all. > > > > I will remove the termcap fall-back feature the next time I build "ncurses". > > I'll also look at the control-Z problem. > > Thanks. Hmmm. Ctrl-Z problem? Please explain. We had a bug involving ^Z in some older versions, but I think it's fixed now. > > I will also put in the plethora of different conXY terminal types to support > > people with old kernels. I do suggest that users who upgrade in place > > upgrade their kernel. The new kernel sets the terminal type to "linux". > > Right. I'm not sure I have the attributions straight here. If you'll send me the conXY entries, I'll put them in the terminfo master. A hearty thank you for changing the console terminal type name to `linux'. This is something I in my terminfo-maintainer hat have been hoping to get all the linux distributions to do. > We have some ancient binaries to support, but I believe we're > currently still using a real termcap library for that. There are > plans to use ncurses to provide termcap support in the new ELF C > library for Linux. Good plan! > > A nifty bonus in the 1.9.6 version, BTW: I made the compiler a bit > > smarter, as a result of which the terminfo tree is 26% smaller than it > > was in 1.9.4. > > Ooh, good. Yes, this was definitely neat-hack-of-the-month if your metric is largest winnage for smallest code change. What happened was, I noticed that the old write-entry code was always writing out fixed maximum-size boolean, numeric, and string-offset tables -- in spite of the fact that there are size members in the object header that the entry-reading code respects (it fills everything above the retrieved size with the capability-absent value). So I just tweaked write-entry to only dump those tables out to the last non-default member, and le voila! 26% shrinkage, and we're still even binary-compatible with SVr4. I was *very* pleased. > Thanks for your comments, but I hope you are aware that I'm not > Debian's ncurses maintainer, and so I can't make changes to (for > example) the way we build our ncurses. Bruce Perens is our ncurses > maintainer. OK, I wasn't clear on that. Bruce, you guys have good karma with me (and I expect with Zeyd, too) because you've provided quite a few high-quality bug reports (precise, replicable, etc) that we've been able to use to improve the package. If there is anything we can do in the way of package reorganizing, more or different makefile scaffolding, documentation, or whatever, to make the Debian build process cleaner, please don't be shy about making suggestions. I have one question that may relate to this. A lot of the older terminfo entries in the latter half of the master file (after the cut mark) are just junk from the P.O.V, of linux users (who's gonna hook up a netronics or an exidy 2500 to a linux box at this late date?). They take up what might be considered a substantial amount of space on smaller systems (the whole tree is 1293 blocks on my machine and I'm sure somewhere between half and three-quarters of that is old entries). I've been thinking about doing something about this but am not sure it's worth the effort. I'm not clear on whether the disk space savings from being selective are worth the slight additional installation complexity. Would it be a net win for you if we: 1. Provided a configuration option to only install the newer entries in the first half of the file? 2. Provided some interactive Perl thingy for culling out the terminfo tree after compilation? 3. Did something else clever at the cost of giving you more default-configuration decisions to make: (fill in the blank here) Eric S. Raymond ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to "Eric S. Raymond" : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1645 ; Package ncurses-developer . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From cus.cam.ac.uk!iwj10 Thu Oct 12 18:43:22 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3Z9e-000D0SC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 18:43 PDT Received: from bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA27880 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 18:42:55 -0700 Received: by bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk (Smail-3.1.29.0 #36) id m0t3Z8L-000C06C; Fri, 13 Oct 95 02:42 BST Received: by chiark id (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.33); Fri, 13 Oct 95 02:11 BST Message-Id: Date: Fri, 13 Oct 95 02:11 BST From: Ian Jackson To: Bruce Perens , esr@locke.ccil.org (Eric S. Raymond) Cc: debian-bugs@Pixar.com, zmbenhal@netcom.com (Zeyd M. Ben-Halim) Subject: Re: Bug#1645: termcap In-Reply-To: References: <199510120344.UAA27510@netcom19.netcom.com> Bruce Perens writes ("Re: Bug#1645: termcap "): > iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk said: > > It should either shut up or not look in /etc/termcap at all. > > I will remove the termcap fall-back feature the next time I build "ncurses". > I'll also look at the control-Z problem. Thanks. > I will also put in the plethora of different conXY terminal types to support > people with old kernels. I do suggest that users who upgrade in place > upgrade their kernel. The new kernel sets the terminal type to "linux". Right. Eric S. Raymond writes ("Re: food for thought!"): > > >Yes. The ncurses package should not start to moan about things it > > >doesn't like in /etc/termcap just because it has to fall back to > > >/etc/termcap to find terminal information. > > This has been fixed in 1.9.6, ncurses now suppresses termcap syntax errors > during termcap fallback. That's good, IMO (though it won't affect us - see above). > > >Furthermore, I've found that it can take a very long time to discover > > >that a terminal is really unknown. This is also unacceptable. > > You want speed? Nuke /etc/termcap and/or use the --disable-termcap > configuration option (both would be best, and the second alternative > preferable if you think you can't do the first). As you can see, our ncurses maintainer is disabling the termcap fallback option. > When there is only a terminfo tree, initialization is quite fast; it's > the compilation overhead from the termcap fallback that's killing you. Right. > Bear in mind that, among other things, ncurses includes a drop-in > replacement for the termcap library. So unless you have ancient binaries > to support, just re-link all termcap-using apps with ncurses, nuke the > termcap file, and go. We have some ancient binaries to support, but I believe we're currently still using a real termcap library for that. There are plans to use ncurses to provide termcap support in the new ELF C library for Linux. > A nifty bonus in the 1.9.6 version, BTW: I made the compiler a bit > smarter, as a result of which the terminfo tree is 26% smaller than it > was in 1.9.4. Ooh, good. Thanks for your comments, but I hope you are aware that I'm not Debian's ncurses maintainer, and so I can't make changes to (for example) the way we build our ncurses. Bruce Perens is our ncurses maintainer. Ian. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Ian Jackson : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1645 ; Package ncurses-developer . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From pixar.com!bruce Thu Oct 12 13:03:42 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3Tqw-000GSBC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 13:03 PDT Received: from mongo.pixar.com by pixar.com with SMTP id AA28694 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 13:03:19 -0700 Received: by mongo.pixar.com (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3TpW-000DDHC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 13:02 PDT Message-Id: X-Mailer: exmh version 1.6.2 7/18/95 To: Ian Jackson , debian-bugs@Pixar.com Cc: bruce@Pixar.com Subject: Re: Bug#1645: termcap In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 12 Oct 1995 01:14:00 PDT." Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Date: Thu, 12 Oct 1995 13:02:14 -0700 From: Bruce Perens iwj10@cus.cam.ac.uk said: > It should either shut up or not look in /etc/termcap at all. I will remove the termcap fall-back feature the next time I build "ncurses". I'll also look at the control-Z problem. I will also put in the plethora of different conXY terminal types to support people with old kernels. I do suggest that users who upgrade in place upgrade their kernel. The new kernel sets the terminal type to "linux". Thanks Bruce -- -- Attention Radio Amateurs: For information on "Linux for Hams", -- read the WWW page http://www.hams.com/LinuxForHams, -- or e-mail the word "help" to info@hams.com ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Bruce Perens : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1645 ; Package ncurses-developer . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From cus.cam.ac.uk!iwj10 Thu Oct 12 06:14:59 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3NTP-000HVMC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 06:14 PDT Received: from bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA10299 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Thu, 12 Oct 1995 06:14:34 -0700 Received: by bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk (Smail-3.1.29.0 #36) id m0t3NSW-000C0hC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 14:14 BST Received: by chiark id (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.33); Thu, 12 Oct 95 14:12 BST Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 14:12 BST From: Ian Jackson To: Debian bugs submission address Cc: zmbenhal@netcom.com (Zeyd M. Ben-Halim) Subject: Re: Bug#1645: termcap In-Reply-To: <199510120344.UAA27434@netcom19.netcom.com> References: <199510120344.UAA27434@netcom19.netcom.com> Zeyd M. Ben-Halim writes in a personal email reply to my bug report: > [Ian Jackson wrote:] > >Yes. The ncurses package should not start to moan about things it > >doesn't like in /etc/termcap just because it has to fall back to > >/etc/termcap to find terminal information. > > Maybe the docs are not clear but if you use the fallback feature you HAVE > to use the canonical /etc/termcap as supplied by Eric. The standard > /etc/termcap is full of mistakes and non-portable crap. > > >It should either shut up or not look in /etc/termcap at all. > > I'd rather it never looked at /etc/termcap but some people want the damn > "feature". I'll try to get Eric to make it ignore any such errors but > then the behavior may be undefined. > > >Furthermore, I've found that it can take a very long time to discover > >that a terminal is really unknown. This is also unacceptable. > > Further incentive to not using the option. A minimal terminfo database > will do nicely. Would the Debian ncurses maintainer please take note. Ian. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Ian Jackson : Extra info received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Information forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1645 ; Package ncurses-developer . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Message received at debian-bugs: From cus.cam.ac.uk!iwj10 Wed Oct 11 17:31:00 1995 Return-Path: Received: from pixar.com by mongo.pixar.com with smtp (Smail3.1.28.1 #15) id m0t3BY4-000G2hC; Wed, 11 Oct 95 17:31 PDT Received: from bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk by pixar.com with SMTP id AA17171 (5.67b/IDA-1.5 for debian-bugs-pipe@mongo.pixar.com); Wed, 11 Oct 1995 17:30:35 -0700 Received: by bootes.cus.cam.ac.uk (Smail-3.1.29.0 #36) id m0t3BWk-000BzVC; Thu, 12 Oct 95 01:29 BST Received: by chiark id (Debian /\oo/\ Smail3.1.29.1 #29.33); Thu, 12 Oct 95 01:14 BST Message-Id: Date: Thu, 12 Oct 95 01:14 BST From: Ian Jackson To: Debian bugs submission address Subject: Re: termcap Package: ncurses-developer Version: 1.9.4-0 William S. Gribble writes ("Re: termcap"): > From: Maarten Boekhold > > I just upgraded just about every package on my system, and now, when trying > > to start up dselect, it barfs with tons of messages about 'illegal > > characters' in /etc/termcap. > > I had this same problem when doing massive upgrading of a system. The > problem is with ncurses, if I remember correctly. Try purging and then > reinstalling ncurses-developer and ncurses-runtime. > > Is this a bug in one of the ncurses-* packages? Yes. The ncurses package should not start to moan about things it doesn't like in /etc/termcap just because it has to fall back to /etc/termcap to find terminal information. It should either shut up or not look in /etc/termcap at all. Furthermore, I've found that it can take a very long time to discover that a terminal is really unknown. This is also unacceptable. Ian. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Acknowledgement sent to Ian Jackson : New bug report received and forwarded. Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Report forwarded to debian-devel@pixar.com : Bug#1645 ; Package ncurses-developer . Full text available. ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Ian Jackson / iwj10@thor.cam.ac.uk , with the debian-bugs tracking mechanism This page last modified 07:43:01 GMT Wed 01 Nov