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From: guy@sun.uucp (Guy Harris)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: setting TERM (arguments to login(1))
Message-ID: <2806@sun.uucp>
Date: Wed, 18-Sep-85 00:18:21 EDT
Article-I.D.: sun.2806
Posted: Wed Sep 18 00:18:21 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 20-Sep-85 04:52:09 EDT
References: <276@lzwi.UUCP>
Organization: Sun Microsystems, Inc.
Lines: 29

> ...Thus, you can get things such as:
> 	login:  psc hp
> which (depending on how you write your .profile), either sets TERM,
> overides a default setting of TERM to a terminal you use all the time,
> or precludes .profile for prompting for and reading a terminal name.

Unfortunately, if your login shell isn't a conventional command interpreter
(i.e., you get thrown directly into some application), you lose, since you
don't *have* a .profile.

And if your "getty" program isn't really "getty", but some screen-oriented
program, you lose even bigger.

> Neither getty(1M) online (SVR2 on a Vax) nor gettydefs(4) from the same
> manual as quoted above make any mention of this feature.  Maybe they
> mean that in /etc/inittab, you can have TERM=foo at the beginning of the
> process string?  (But "sh -c 'exec FOO=bar ...'" doesn't seem to work
> well.)

No, but (assuming you've fixed "login" to propagate whatever the setting of
TERM was when it was entered),

	"env TERM=foo getty..."

(or "env TERM=foo my_office_automation_systems_login_frame" or whatever)
will work just fine.  (Thanks and a tip of the hat to Eric Finger for this
one.)

	Guy Harris


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