raspberry Pi

[Brian K. White]

On 5/2/2013 1:28 PM, Henry Arredondo wrote:
> Hi,
>
> I got the raspberry pi and I want to use it to ssh to a SCO box like a dumb terminal, I tested it but the DEL key is not working, Do you know the terminal emulation needed when using linux -> SCO Unix ?
>
> Is it possible to install filepro running an ARM microprocessor, the raspberry can run any of these distros already :
>
> Raspian wheezy.. It's a reference root filesystem from Alex and Dom, based on the Raspbian<http://www.raspbian.org/> optimised version of Debian, and containing LXDE, Midori, development tools and example source code for multimedia functions
>
> Soft-float debian wheezy .. This image is identical to the Raspbian "wheezy" image, but uses the slower soft-float ABI. It is only intended for use with software such as the Oracle JVM<http://www.oracle.com/technetwork/java/javase/downloads/jdk7-downloads-1637583.html> which does not yet support the hard-float ABI used by Raspbian.
>
> Arch linux ARM...Arch Linux ARM is based on Arch Linux, which aims for simplicity and full control to the end user. Note that this distribution may not be suitable for beginners. The latest version of this image uses the hard-float ABI, and boots to a command prompt in around ten seconds.
>
> Thanks
>
> Henry Arredondo

The answer is complicated.

You can make the console on the rasberry pi work as a sco console with 
some effort, and at the expense of slightly breaking all the local linux 
applications. It's so messy I will not actually get into it unless you 
convince me that that's really what you want is to make a completely 
broken linux system on the pi, but it will function as a scoansi dumb 
terminal and you don't care at all about using the pi for it's own local 
linux system and you won't be doing updates even.

Or were you even talking about the console or were you talking about 
xterm or lxterm or some other xterm-alike? which is a totally different 
problem and totally different answers.

The real answer is, you do not make the linux console or xterm apps 
emulate a sco console, you tell the sco system what your terminal is, 
which is linux or xterm, or you run a terminal _emulator_ app, to 
_emulate_ a sco console.

That means copying linux and xterm terminal definitions from termcap and 
terminfo from linux to sco, and in /etc/profile on sco add a few lines 
to detect if TERM is linux or xterm and in that case run an stty command 
to change the break key to ctrl-c: "stty intr ^c"

If your terminal is the linux console or an xterm-alike, the del key can 
not be used as the break key because those terminals emit a multi-byte 
sequence ^[[3~ from the Del key, not a single byte. A sco console emits 
a single byte "^?" from the Del key, so it can be used as break.

There ARE ways to hack both the linux console and most xterm-alike apps 
to change what the keys do, like you could make the Del key send ^? 
instead of ^[[3~ , but when you do that you break the terminal for every 
other app because it's still called "linux" or "xterm" but it is no 
longer doing what linux or xterm terminals do.

So if you want to ask instead how to teach the sco box to recognize a 
linux console or xterm, that I can answer in detail.

Or if you want to ask instead what is a good sco-ansi emulator app that 
you can run on a raspberry pi, I don't know off-hand, but that also is 
at least a valid question. In gui there is a linux version of putty that 
can do an OK job of emulating scoansi. The pi may not have the 
horsepower but you can also run most windows terminal emulators in wine.
Or you could take any xterm-based app and possibly modify it enough 
through .Xdefaults without having to modify it's source code, and make a 
special menu entry or desktop icon that loads the special config without 
breaking the app the rest of the time for everything else. Outside of 
gui I don't know any console apps that can emulate scoansi but there 
might be one somewhere.

But asking how to make the the linux console behave as a sco console... 
that's only a valid question in the way that shooting yourself in the 
foot is a valid wish.

Another idea, is there a FreeBSD port yet?
The freebsd console calls itself "cons25" in the TERM variable, which 
the sco box will not recognize by default, but it is almost exactly the 
same as the sco console, including that it sends ^? from it's Del key. I 
don't think the freebsd system defaults to using Del for break the way 
sco does, but it can at least. If you installed freebsd on the pi, it's 
Del key would send ^?, so when you then ssh to a sco box, Del would work 
as break. You'd still have to do a little hacking on the sco box. Maybe 
as little as simply overwriting TERM to say TERM=ansi.

-- 
bkw