Error opening terminal rxvt unicode

#1 2012-06-04 09:05:25

#2 2012-06-04 09:11:37

#3 2012-06-04 16:10:01

#4 2012-06-04 16:20:53

#5 2012-06-04 16:42:39

#6 2012-06-04 17:37:02

#7 2012-06-04 19:44:55

#8 2012-06-04 20:21:23

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• [SOLVED] Error opening terminal: xterm.

1. Error opening terminal: xterm.
   

   Using Ubuntu 14.04

   When i type «nano» into the terminal I receive the following message:
   Error opening terminal: xterm.

   Typing «top» will give this message:
   ‘xterm’: unknown terminal type.

   Word wrap is not working when I push backspace on a multi-line command.

   Ctrl+Alt+F6 -> commands work fine.
   xterm works fine.
   Have tried creating a new user but it has the same problem.
   Tried what was suggested here but it doesn’t help.

   Any other suggestions out there?

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2. Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
   

   Not all that familiar with the Unity system, but in Systems > Settings > Preferences, which terminal is set as preferred?

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3. Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
   

   Just adding to the list of symptoms. When typing «man <something>» The following message will be shown «WARNING: terminal is not fully functional»

   I found this command to find out which terminal is preferred:
   -ubuntu:~$ gsettings get org.gnome.desktop.default-applications.terminal exec
   ‘x-terminal-emulator’

   Edit: I just changed it to xterm and was about to say I’m happy with that. but It’s hard to copy and paste things to xterm

   Last edited by philip10; April 12th, 2015 at 01:45 AM.

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4. Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
   

   Try my favorite: the Xfce terminal. Copy-paste is easy, lot of customizing options.

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5. Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
   

   I installed and opened xfce terminal
   sudo apt-get install xfce4-terminal

   xfce4-terminal
   Failed to connect to session manager: Failed to connect to the session manager: SESSION_MANAGER environment variable not defined

   echo $SESSION_MANAGER
   <blankline>

   xfce4-terminal still opens up but it suffers from the same problems as x-terminal-emulator

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6. Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
   

   Hi philip10.

   Could you open a terminal run these commands, and post back the results (you can copy/paste the text)?

   Code:

   ls ~/.bash_logout ~/.bashrc ~/.profile
   
   diff /etc/skel/.bashrc ~/.bashrc
   
   diff /etc/skel/.profile ~/.profile

   Regards.

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7. Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
   

   ls ~/.bash_logout ~/.bashrc ~/.profile

   Code:

   /home/philip/.bash_logout  /home/philip/.bashrc  /home/philip/.profile

   diff /etc/skel/.bashrc ~/.bashrc
   diff /etc/skel/.profile ~/.profile

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8. Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
   

   Ok I have almost figured this out.

   Code:

   sudo apt-get install rxvt-unicode
   export TERM=rxvt-unicode

   From there on everything works perfectly. My only problem now is that i have to set TERM all the time. How can i set it permanently to rxvt-unicode using either gnome-terminal or xfce4-terminal? … or any other terminal that supports copy n paste

   Last edited by philip10; April 29th, 2015 at 11:23 AM.

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9. Re: Error opening terminal: xterm.
   

   Ok completely figured it out now.

   Code:

   sudo apt-get install rxvt-unicode
   nano ~/.bashrc
   export TERM=rxvt-unicode

   Now you should be able to run x-terminal-emulator or gnome-terminal-emulator and everything should work fine.

   I’m not sure if this is just me but if you press ctrl+alt+T and are confronted with the wrong terminal, just open system settings -> keyboard -> shortcuts -> create a custom shortcut with your preferred terminal on ctrl+alt+t. This will override the system shortcut.

   Last edited by philip10; May 26th, 2015 at 10:04 AM.

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Tags for this Thread

Error Description:

Solution 1:

• It seems like we have a problem with the terminal definition.
• Try using xterm instead of xterm-256color

export TERM=xterm

click below button to copy the code. By — nano tutorial — team

• or the following terminal setting:

export TERMINFO=/etc/terminfo
export TERM=linux

click below button to copy the code. By — nano tutorial — team

• Also, if we still have problem with nano try using vi which is a simple editor and doesn’t required much from the terminal

sudo vi /var/www/mutillidae/config.inc

click below button to copy the code. By — nano tutorial — team

Solution 2:

• Code:

sudo apt-get install rxvt-unicode
nano ~/.bashrc
export TERM=rxvt-unicode

click below button to copy the code. By — nano tutorial — team

• Now we should be able to run x-terminal-emulator or gnome-terminal-emulator and everything should work fine.

• we are not sure if this is just me but if we press ctrl+alt+T and are confronted with the wrong terminal, just open system settings -> keyboard -> shortcuts -> create a custom shortcut with our preferred terminal on ctrl+alt+t. This will override the system shortcut.

Solution 3:

• After upgrading to OSX Lion, we started getting this error on certain (Debian/Ubuntu) servers.
• The fix is simply to install the “ncurses-term” package which provides the file /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-256color.

• This worked for us on a Ubuntu server

Solution 4:

• The problem can be solved in this way:

• Download Lion Installer from the App Store
• Download unpkg:
• Open Lion Installer app in Finder (Right click -> Show Package Contents)
• Open InstallESD.dmg (under SharedSupport)
• Unpack BSD.pkg with unpkg (Located under Packages) Term info will be located in the new BSD folder in /usr/share/terminfo

Solution 5:

• We can confirm this is a terminfo issue. This is what worked for us.
• SSH in to the remote machine and run

sudo apt-get install ncurses-term

click below button to copy the code. By — nano tutorial — team