terminal settings for emacs over remote ssh

terminal settings for emacs over remote ssh

[Stefan Vollmar]

Hello,

this is probably a very old question, sorry for having to ask again: I  
want to use Emacs 22.2.1 (Fedora Core 10, x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)  
using a remote ssh-connection from a MacOS X terminal, also from a  
PuTTY session on a windows box (both in a rather old-fashioned way).  
In both cases I find that when opening a text in Emacs, the very first  
line starts at the right-most column. Moving down with the cursor will  
increment the line position not in the status line (last line) but  
rather in the last but one line.

My guess is that the terminal emulation is the problem, I have tried  
vt100 and xterm, as mentioned above, it is nothing MacOS or Windows  
specific wrong with the ssh-connection, I also made sure not to use  
any Emacs customizations.

Any help is appreciated.
Many thanks in advance,
  Stefan
-- 
Dr. Stefan Vollmar, Dipl.-Phys.
Max-Planck-Institut für neurologische Forschung
Gleuelerstr. 50, 50931 Köln, Germany
Tel.: +49-221-4726-213  FAX +49-221-4726-298
Tel.: +49-221-478-5713  Mobile: 0160-93874279
Email: vollmar@nf.mpg.de   http://www.nf.mpg.de

Re: terminal settings for emacs over remote ssh

[Tim X]

Stefan Vollmar <vollmar@nf.mpg.de> writes:

> Hello,
>
> this is probably a very old question, sorry for having to ask again: I want
> to use Emacs 22.2.1 (Fedora Core 10, x86_64-redhat-linux-gnu)  using a
> remote ssh-connection from a MacOS X terminal, also from a  PuTTY session
> on a windows box (both in a rather old-fashioned way).  In both cases I
> find that when opening a text in Emacs, the very first  line starts at the
> right-most column. Moving down with the cursor will  increment the line
> position not in the status line (last line) but  rather in the last but one
> line.
>
> My guess is that the terminal emulation is the problem, I have tried vt100
> and xterm, as mentioned above, it is nothing MacOS or Windows  specific
> wrong with the ssh-connection, I also made sure not to use  any Emacs
> customizations.
>

I suspect your right - it does sound like a terminal I/O issue.

What is the $TERM variable on the remote system?  What is its value on
the local system (Mac).

When I've run into this problem, the cause has generally been that the
remote system doesn't recognise the term settings of the local system. 
Setting to vt100 or xterm often works, but if these settings are not
compatible with your local term settings, you can get weird behavior. 

I use to get this problem when logging in from a console on Linux to a
non-linux remote host. The remote host wouldn't recognise the Linux
console terminal name and depending on the system, would set the term to
'dumb' or something similar. I even had this problem when colour xterms
first came out because older unix boxes didn't understand a term type of
xterm-color. 

The three solutions I used were to 

1. Force a compatible term type by setting the TERM variable on the
remote system before starting emacs

2. Copy the terminal definition into the terminfo database on the remote
system

3. Setting my local TERM variable to something that is recognised by the
remote system. 

Note that I've not used windows since 3.11, so have no idea how all this
stuff interacts with windows. 

If your Mac term setting is something 'unusual' - particularly if its
something only recognised on Mac systems, either you need to find a
compatible term setting for the remote system or you need to change the
local system to something more 'standard'. 

From memory, I think some of this may be covered in the emacs
FAQ. Maybe check that out and see if it gives some hints. It comes
bundled with emacs and is available from the help menu

HTH

Tim
>

-- 
tcross (at) rapttech dot com dot au