On 2010-06-22 17:22 +0200, Josh Triplett wrote: > On Tue, Jun 22, 2010 at 01:08:06PM +0200, Sven Joachim wrote: >> Sorry for not replying sooner, I did not get around to actually testing >> the Debian installer. >> >> On 2009-12-23 02:54 +0100, Josh Triplett wrote: >> >> > Package: ncurses-base >> > Version: 5.7+20090803-2 >> > Severity: normal >> > >> > The Debian installer uses bogl-bterm on the primary terminal, which uses >> > TERM=bterm. Neither ncurses-base nor ncurses-term knows about this >> > terminal type, so all screen-oriented programs fail to run. This >> > affects the ability to run such programs from a rescue environment, >> > forcing the user to switch to an alternate TTY rather than using the >> > shell run by the installer; if the user doesn't know how to do that, >> > they'll find themselves unable to run editors, aptitude, and other such >> > programs useful when recovering a system. >> >> With an up to date installer (a netinst snapshot from yesterday) this >> does not happen, because it copies the bterm terminfo entry to a >> temporary directory under /target and sets TERMINFO accordingly. I >> haven't tested the Lenny installer, though. > > Does this occur even in rescue mode when not installing a system?
It occurs _only_ in rescue mode when you choose to start a shell in the chroot. Not otherwise. > (If so, I find it somewhat disturbing that rescue mode writes to the > system's partition...) When you decide to chroot into your normal system, that partition has to be mounted read/write anyway to do anything useful. >> > Please include the terminfo entry for bterm, preferably in ncurses-base, >> > but if not there then in ncurses-term. >> >> Taking over the bterm terminfo entry from bogl-bterm in ncurses-term >> would be possible, but given bogl-bterm's very low popcon I don't think >> it would be very useful. > > ...except for making sure that a rescue shell from the installer will > work on an arbitrary Debian system. :) Well, the current solution in the installer will work for an arbitrary GNU/Linux system, Debian or not. :-) > Actually, I can think of one other sensible alternative solution: hack > bterm so that it works with TERM=xterm or TERM=vt100, rather than using > a gratuitously incompatible TERM=bterm. Most terminal emulators these > days seem to strive for xterm-compatibility, for exactly this reason. > Perhaps bterm should as well. You're welcome to implement that, bterm is orphaned and has no upstream so you are completely free to hack on it. ;-) Sven -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [email protected] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [email protected]
