GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 130671
Failure to correctly identify terminal type to VMS host
Last modified: 2005-08-29 11:50:24 UTC
When I connect to a VMS host and issue SET TERMINAL/INQUIRE, I receive the following message: $ SET TERMINAL/INQUIRE %SET-W-NOTSET, error modifying TNA4198: -SET-I-UNKTERM, unknown terminal type This drastically affects my ability to use screen-oriented applications on the host. The results of SHOW TERMINAL are: $ SHOW TERMINAL Terminal: _TNA4201: Device_Type: VT300_Series Owner: PWHYSALL Remote Port Info: Host: vortex.technology.serco.com Port: 33405 Input: 9600 LFfill: 0 Width: 80 Parity: None Output: 9600 CRfill: 0 Page: 24 Terminal Characteristics: Interactive Echo Type_ahead No Escape Hostsync TTsync Lowercase No Tab Wrap Scope No Remote No Eightbit Broadcast No Readsync No Form Fulldup No Modem No Local_echo No Autobaud Hangup No Brdcstmbx No DMA No Altypeahd Set_speed No Commsync Line Editing Insert editing No Fallback No Dialup No Secure server No Disconnect No Pasthru No Syspassword No SIXEL Graphics No Soft Characters No Printer Port Numeric Keypad No ANSI_CRT No Regis No Block_mode No Advanced_video No Edit_mode No DEC_CRT No DEC_CRT2 No DEC_CRT3 No DEC_CRT4 No DEC_CRT5 No Ansi_Color VMS Style Input
For comparison, here's the result of SHOW TERMINAL when xterm (version string "XFree86 4.3.99.5(179)"): $ SHOW TERMINAL Terminal: _TNA4202: Device_Type: VT100 Owner: PWHYSALL Remote Port Info: Host: vortex.technology.serco.com Port: 33414 Input: 9600 LFfill: 0 Width: 80 Parity: None Output: 9600 CRfill: 0 Page: 50 Terminal Characteristics: Interactive Echo Type_ahead No Escape Hostsync TTsync Lowercase Tab Wrap Scope No Remote No Eightbit Broadcast No Readsync No Form Fulldup No Modem No Local_echo No Autobaud Hangup No Brdcstmbx No DMA No Altypeahd Set_speed No Commsync Line Editing Insert editing No Fallback No Dialup No Secure server No Disconnect No Pasthru No Syspassword No SIXEL Graphics No Soft Characters No Printer Port Numeric Keypad ANSI_CRT No Regis No Block_mode Advanced_video No Edit_mode DEC_CRT No DEC_CRT2 No DEC_CRT3 No DEC_CRT4 No DEC_CRT5 No Ansi_Color VMS Style Input $
At the suggestion of someone from #gnome, I've tried manually setting the TERM and COLORTERM environment variables before connecting to the VMS host. None of the following values produced any variation in behaviour: ansi, xterm, vt100, vt220
This is due to VMS failing to recognise the primary identification response from VTE, so it's not a gnome-terminal bug as such. VTE probably wants fixing.
Anyone knows what does VMS do to ask for terminal type?
It's a vte bug, not a gnome-terminal one. vte sends ESC[?60;9;c in vte_sequence_handler_send_primary_device_attributes. The comment above this claims that this represents a VT220 with national character set support, but http://vt100.net/docs/vt220-rm/chapter4.html#S4.17 suggests that that would be ESC[?62;9;c 60 doesn't seem to be defined anywhere, so it's unsurprising that VMS is unhappy about it. I think the correct fix is to change 60 to 62, but I'll try to sort out testing it against a VMS box first.
This should be trivially fixable, if that's all to it. Moving to vte.
I've got an account on the Deathrow VMS cluster. If someone wants me to conduct some testing, I can do that.
This seems to be “documented” here: http://www.cs.utk.edu/~shuford/terminal/terminal_identification_news.txt Follows a patch to fix this...
Created attachment 28365 [details] [review] Set the device attributes right
Can we get this in please?
This fixes one failing test in the Terminal Reports section in vttest too. 4. Primary Device Attributes (DA) VT100 & up This fails with the current code and succeeds with this patch.
Applying this too since it is documented and fixes a testcase in vttest.
Closing.