Editing on the serial console

[bob prohaska]

Editing files in single-user mode on the serial console 
is non-trivial. Both vi and ee have problems displaying 
the file, ed doesn't really try so it works but isn't
much fun. Is there a better option?  When the machine 
boots single-user it reports "can't read /etc/termcap", 
is something misconfigured?

I'm dealing with Raspberry Pi, but am not sure if that's
the source of the difficulty.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska