Linux pico

August 9, 2006 3:34 PM

Linux/pico question: How come when I am on Telnet and run pico, it doesn't clear the screen?

I'm using Win2K command prompt telnet to connect. When I was on Dreamhost (GNU/Linux), pico would clear the screen and I could work on a document. When I am on a Free BSD system, pico does not clear the screen. So basically it overlays the editing screen on top of what's already there, creating a mess.

I'm not looking for pico alternatives... just trying to see how to fix this so I can continue as usual.

posted by zek to computers & internet (14 comments total)

First, although this is probably a dreadful hack, try opening pico and using the key combo "control-l" which is used by pico to refresh the screen. Does that help? (and because of typographic ambiguities, that is control and the letter L, although lowercase. Hey, whomever, THANKS for making 1 and l look the same)

I suspect that there is an issue with the type of terminal that is either being auto-detected or set manually by a script somewhere. If the remote server thinks you have a different terminal than you really do, then the display can have odd bugs like this.

Try this at the command line:
echo $TERM
and see what you get back. I'm not dead sure what it "should" be for telneting from the command line.

At any rate, I highly recommend the windows tool puTTY" to do stuff like this instead of telnet or what have you. It's a really great terminal emulator, and it's free. It's so good that I use it as a frontend to cygwin.
posted by RustyBrooks at 3:41 PM on August 9, 2006

(oh, and I'm not recommending putty as a replacement for pico, by the way, but rather as a replacement for using windows telnet)
posted by RustyBrooks at 3:42 PM on August 9, 2006

I agree with RustyBrooks on puTTy recommendation. Lightweight, but still has good basic telnet features, and reasonable automation for connecting to all kinds of servers. Works fine with BSD servers.
posted by paulsc at 3:58 PM on August 9, 2006

Yeah, telnet is bad. It's not encrypted, and it's easy to snoop. Putty is free and fairly secure. It also has excellent terminal emulation.

Secure shell can also do all kinds of cool stuff with port forwarding and file copying and the like... it's just tremendously better than telnet. Totally free, and very likely already installed and running on the server.

Turn off telnet. Telnet is bad.
posted by Malor at 3:58 PM on August 9, 2006

I have a temporary workaround... I downloaded a freeware telnet application and it doesn't exhibit this weird behavior. Looks like this is Microsoft's doing.
posted by zek at 3:59 PM on August 9, 2006

Also, thanks, I'll have to move to putty.
posted by zek at 3:59 PM on August 9, 2006

(I personally prefer SSH Secure Shell to putty.)
posted by smackfu at 4:39 PM on August 9, 2006

I'm using Win2K command prompt telnet to connect.

Telnet clients are not terminal emulators, and neither is the win2k console window.

Use Putty.
posted by baylink at 4:48 PM on August 9, 2006

I was in an uncomfortable posture when I typed that, and was unhelpfully short.

The 'terminal emulation' part of the process is the code at your end that handles cursor positioning, screen clearing, and things like that. Since it is my understanding that neither the Windows console windows nor the Windows telnet client do *any* terminal emulation at all, I'm a bit surprised you didn't have more trouble than just an inability to get the screen cleared.

Perhaps newer versions do merely *bad* terminal emulation.

In either event, PuTTY is free, works excellently, and should solve every problem you've ever had in your entire life.
posted by baylink at 5:52 PM on August 9, 2006

Hey PuTTY fans... you might wanna check out Poderosa, a (I think) nicer windows SSH client. It's not perfect -- it is, after all, just a terminal emulator, but I find that it's a little better designed than putty.
posted by ph00dz at 7:14 PM on August 9, 2006

PuTTY is the sh!t. I've used it for about a decade, recently moving from a Win95 machine (works great!) to a Linux machine (works good enough). I just wish the configs were portable so I wouldn't have to manually set up all my destinations in it every time I get a new machine.

My COWorker still uses Windows telnet and I just can't believe it everytime I see him slogging through that.
posted by intermod at 7:42 PM on August 9, 2006

intermod: you can export the appropriate chunk of registry to a file, and carry that.
posted by baylink at 9:22 PM on August 9, 2006

Also, unless you're actually using pine (the email client that pico is from) you should try using Nano (a GNU clone of pico, without the huge dependency of pine). I personally use vim, but it's not for everyone.
posted by blasdelf at 1:47 AM on August 10, 2006

Thanks baylink, I'll be trying that with my next new machine next month!
posted by intermod at 5:21 AM on August 10, 2006