Your message dated Thu, 21 May 2026 23:51:13 +0200
with message-id <[email protected]>
and subject line Closing as stale/wontfix
has caused the Debian Bug report #797017,
regarding screen: terminfo hack in /etc/screenrc confuses terminfo's upstream
(was: terminfo status line for screen-s)
to be marked as done.
This means that you claim that the problem has been dealt with.
If this is not the case it is now your responsibility to reopen the
Bug report if necessary, and/or fix the problem forthwith.
(NB: If you are a system administrator and have no idea what this
message is talking about, this may indicate a serious mail system
misconfiguration somewhere. Please contact [email protected]
immediately.)
--
797017: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=797017
Debian Bug Tracking System
Contact [email protected] with problems
--- Begin Message ---
Package: screen
Hi,
in Debian's /etc/screenrc some termcap/terminfo capabilities for xterm
are set (screen seems to always use termcap names in config files):
termcapinfo xterm*|rxvt*|kterm*|Eterm* hs:ts=\E]0;:fs=\007:ds=\E]0;\007
... and accordingly screen thinks that the terminal supports a hardstatus:
screen(1):
| ... if the terminal doesn't have a hardstatus line (i.e. the
^ missing comma
| termcap/terminfo capabilities "hs", "ts", "fs" and "ds" are not set).
... and therefore wrongly requires "hardstatus alwayslastline" to be
used instead of "hardstatus lastline":
screen(1):
| If you prepend the word "always" to the type (e.g., "alwayslastline"),
| screen will use the type even if the terminal supports a hardstatus.
... which confused Thomas Dickey, whilst he was trying to improve the
terminfo status line for screen-s:
<https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-ncurses/2014-11/msg00001.html>:
> ... Looking for clues in screen(1), I tried adding
> hardstatus lastline
>
> to my ~/.screenrc, but saw no difference.
People that do not know what a hardstatus is, would just have tried
alwayslastline and succeeded, but a terminfo upstream knows such things.
> So... what configuration details can you provide to help me test
> (and document) this change?
For testing purposes (if still relevant), you can also enable
hardstatus interactively:
- start screen (press enter if you see the copyright notice)
- press CTRL-a
- paste this into the terminal (without the leading spaces):
:hardstatus alwayslastline "%{= gk} .. oo OO"
- press return
Possible fixes for this bug:
1. Convince Thomas Dickey, or whoever is responsible for such things,
to add a new terminfo capability that indicates that the terminal
is able to set the window's titlebar. Then wait until screen and
other tools use this in a proper way ...
2. Disable this setting and confuse other Debian users that expect
this hack.
README.Debian suggests that people ask how to disable this and that
even the former Maintainer does not know any useful answer that does
not involve becoming root ('add "hardstatus alwaysmessage"' is as
useful as 'use tmux instead').
A feature people want to remove and that can not (easily) be
disabled in ~/.screenrc but can easily be enabled in ~/.screenrc
does not belong to the system wide screen rc file. Adding it to
a recommended ~/.screenrc for new users, if such a file ever will
exist, could be reasonable.
Carsten
--- End Message ---
--- Begin Message ---
tags 797017 + wontfix
thanks
Hi,
This bug is over 10 years old with no activity or followup.
The reported behaviour is still intentional, and Debian documents this
behaviour and override options in README.Debian (Q&A "Screen sets my
xterm titlebar...").
Closing as stale/wontfix.
Cheers,
Peter Dey
--- End Message ---
