desktop environments

[TEDickey]

By the way, the comment about xterm logging to file sounds as if
you're using the flavor from the freeware cd, rather than the one
that Sun installs by default. You can verify that by seeing if
"xterm -v" prints a version number.

 

[LCTSI]

Your problem with xterm sounds like something that can be fixed,
with a little investigation. The usual mismatches with Linux vs Solaris
are for the backspace/delete keys, but this isn't that one. More
likely it's a mismatch for the terminal description (what TERM is set to).
Knowing that would be helpful.

So I have two choices:
1) Roll up to a client site and have to make env changes on every box I have to connect to in order to get my terminal working.
2) Use xterm and everything just works, with added benefits.

And I'm not using the SFW xterm most of the time, it's just the plain ol' xterm from SUNWxwopt on most boxes.

 

[TEDickey]

Well, you did say you launch xterm from a script, which is on the client machine.
It's reasonably likely that the problem can be fixed within the script.

 

[LCTSI]

Well, you did say you launch xterm from a script, which is on the client machine.
It's reasonably likely that the problem can be fixed within the script.

Maybe, but none of the boxes I SSH to like that have any term problems to be fixed.

 

[TEDickey]

Maybe, but none of the boxes I SSH to like that have any term problems to be fixed.

...except for the odd comment about the unexpected escape character
echoing when you press up-arrow? That's puzzling, unless you are using
similar shells, with only one honoring cursor keys for editing, e.g,. csh vs
tcsh.

 

[LCTSI]

...except for the odd comment about the unexpected escape character
echoing when you press up-arrow? That's puzzling, unless you are using
similar shells, with only one honoring cursor keys for editing, e.g,. csh vs
tcsh.

That only happens if I ssh from a local terminal to a Solaris box... a process which I systematically avoid.

Here's how I connect
Internal Boxes : ssh -n $hostname -Y xterm
DMZ Boxes : xterm -e ssh $hostname

Realistically if I need 4-5 terminals from one remote box I would spawn extra remote xterms anyway, so I just start with a remote forwarded xterm when its available.

Another plus: spawning an xterm when SSHing into an Ubuntu box lets you avoid the retarded Canonical MOTD crap that is hard to get rid of. One box I was working on had borked routes or DNS or something (no idea which, but I did fix it), and when you would SSH directly it would hang for a couple of minutes waiting on the MOTD to time out. You could ssh X forward an xterm and get right in without waiting.


These days you have xrsh and xrlogin to do those things too.

 

[TEDickey]

I see (partly - I'd be curious if the problem was due to environment variable passed by ssh, or some quirk in the tty modes). But I rarely have more than 2-3 terminal windows up, using screen to combine the related connections.