Re: unknown terminal "screen.linux"

[Aaron Griffin]

On 10/28/05, Mark Himsley <address@hidden> wrote:
> Hello,
>
> I have been using the excellent Screen window manager for many years and
> have been exceedingly happy with it.
>
> Up until 6 months ago I had been using a RedHat 9 as the main server I ssh
> into. On it I tried to keep a `screen` running with some windows sshed into
> other servers, to give me a central perpetual connection to these other
> servers. This worked very well and I had no problems - it was using:
>
> $ screen --version
> Screen version 3.09.13 (FAU) 5-Sep-02
>
> Six months ago I bought a faster machine and installed Fedora Core 3. I
> tried to setup the same arrangement but I am getting some problems with the
> terminal environment - the FC3 machine is using:
>
> $ screen --version
> Screen version 4.00.02 (FAU) 5-Dec-03
>
> Which I *think* is the latest version.
>
>
> If I am using a screen window on the FC3 machine and I ssh to, for
> instance, a Redhat 9 server I get the following error:
>
> $ ssh address@hidden
> unknown terminal "screen.linux"
> unknown terminal "screen.linux"
>
> and the terminal does not behave correctly.
>
> If instead I enter the command:
>
> $ TERM=screen ssh address@hidden
>
> then everything works well.
>
>
> >From the man page I was under the impression that:
>
> "When screen tries to figure out a terminal name for itself, it first looks
> for an entry named "screen.<term>", where  <term> is the contents of your
> $TERM variable. If no such entry exists, screen tries "screen" (or
> "screen-w" if the terminal is wide (132 cols or more)). If even this entry
> cannot be found, "vt100" is used as a substitute."
>
> When I ssh into the FC3 machine my $TERM variable is 'linux'. When I invoke
> Screen it is turning that into 'screen.linux'. When I ssh to another
> machine I though that Screen would try 'screen.linux', 'screen' and 'vt100'
> to try to get a valid terminal type.
>
> It appears to me that Screen 4.00.02 is not trying either the 'screen' or
> the 'vt100' substitutes.
>
> It it me - is there some configuration that I have failed to set in my
> ~/.screenrc that would get over this problem?
>
> My current solution is to add this to /etc/profile
>
> if [ "$TERM" = "screen.linux" ]; then
>         TERM="screen"
>         export TERM
> fi
>
> This gets over the problem but it feels like there aught to be a more
> elegant solution. Alternatively I've got completely the wrong end of the
> stick.
>
> Thanks for your time.
>
> --
> Mark Himsley
>

What terminal are you using screen in initially?  That should be
responsible for the TERM variable.  For instance, if I am in
rxvt-unicode (which I usually am), and I ssh to one of my servers, I
get the same unknown terminal messages for "rxvt-unicode".