Editing on the serial console

[Warner Losh]

On Thu, Mar 7, 2019, 10:53 PM bob prohaska <fbsd at www.zefox.net> wrote:

> On Thu, Mar 07, 2019 at 11:13:37AM -0800, Rodney W. Grimes wrote:
> >
> > It is where it is because it is not
> >       /etc/      system configuration files and scripts
> > and is
> >       /usr/share/     architecture-independent files
> >             misc/       miscellaneous system-wide ASCII text files
> >
> > The /etc/termcap link is for backwards compatibility.
> >
>
> The logic is impeccable, but the utility leaves something to be
> desired. On entering single user, the RPI console reports
>
> Enter full pathname of shell or RETURN for /bin/sh:
> Cannot read termcap database;
> using dumb terminal settings.
>
> It was necessary to mount /usr so as to get at vi, which one might
> expect to make the termcap database accessible. Even so, the display
> was garbled. Maybe this was the result of using lxterminal to ssh to
> the host holding the usb-serial adapter to the target's serial console.
>
> Using putty to connect to the usb-serial host produced a clean display.
>
> The serial console is rather indespensible on an RPI, is there a way
> to configure it to be well-behaved with whatever terminal emulator
> is readily available?
>

No. Termcap must match the terminal emulator. If it doesn't, then there
will be problems. At best, we could expand termcap with a special entry for
lxterminal if it can't cope with xterm entry.

Warner

Warner

>