nano error: Error opening terminal: xterm-256color

Question

On Red Hat this worked for me:

export TERM=xterm

further info here: http://www.cloudfarm.it/fix-error-opening-terminal-xterm-256color-unknown-terminal-type/

After upgrading to OSX Lion, I 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 me on a Ubuntu server, via Erik Osterman.

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

 sudo apt-get install ncurses-term

Boom. Problem solved.

I had this problem connecting to http://sdf.org through Mac OS X Lion. I changed under Terminal Preferences (⌘+,) > Advanced pane, Declare Terminal as to VT-100.

I also marked Delete Sends Ctrl-H because this Mac connection was confusing zsh.

It appears to be working for my use case.

1. edit your .bash_profile file

   vim .bash_profile

2. commnet

   #export TERM=xterm-256color

3. add this

   export TERMINFO=/usr/share/terminfo

   export TERM=xterm-basic

   to your .bash_profile

4. finally

   run:

   source .bash_profile

I, too, have this problem on an older Mac that I upgraded to Lion.

Before reading the terminfo tip, I was able to get vi and less working by doing "export TERM=xterm".

After reading the tip, I grabbed /usr/share/terminfo from a newer Mac that has fresh install of Lion and does not exhibit this problem.

Now, even though echo $TERM still yields xterm-256color, vi and less now work fine.