Error opening terminal: xterm.

[philip10]

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 (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=2197486) but it doesn't help.

Any other suggestions out there?

[egeezer]

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

[philip10]

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 :(

[egeezer]

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

[philip10]

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

[papibe]

Hi philip10.

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

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

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

diff /etc/skel/.profile ~/.profile
Regards.

[philip10]

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

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

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

<Nothing>

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

<nothing>

[philip10]

Ok I have almost figured this out.


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

[philip10]

Ok completely figured it out now.


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.