Re: what is TERM?

[David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org>]

Dan Nicolaescu <dann@ics.uci.edu> writes:

> Does anyone know what the #ifdef TERM code in src/s/gnu-linux.h is
> supposed to do?
>
> process.c has this:
> /* TERM is a poor-man's SLIP, used on GNU/Linux.  */
> #ifdef TERM
> #include <client.h>
> #endif
>
> Nothing defines TERM, so can all the code that depends on it go?

You can compile with -DTERM, I suppose.  term is a serial line
communications program not requiring administrator priviledges used for
tunneling TCP ports to a normal dialup modem login.  Since no admin
rights are required for tunneling, the local programs need to be
recompiled with a special library so that they try looking up the ports
on the other side first.

In that manner, one can, for example, use Emacs on the local machine for
reading Usenet and sending Mail to the remote machine where one just has
a normal terminal account.

It is probably not used all too much anymore: pure terminal dialups have
become rather rare.  One reference I found on the web is
<URL:http://www.cit.gu.edu.au/~anthony/info/usage/term_howto.html>.

-- 
David Kastrup, Kriemhildstr. 15, 44793 Bochum