Setting the terminal capabilities

You must set the terminal name of the HVC terminal devices to a suitable value to obtain correct terminal output on the terminal emulator of your workstation.

The terminal name indicates the capabilities of the terminal device. Examples for terminal names are linux, dumb, xterm, or vt220. You set the terminal name with the TERM environment variable.

Some getty programs accept the terminal name as a parameter and set the TERM environment variable accordingly at startup. For other getty programs, you must explicitly set the variable after the terminal session is established, for example by entering the following command:

# export TERM=xterm

The value of the TERM variable is specific for each established terminal session and different sessions can use different values.

If xterm does not result in properly displayed terminal output, find out the setting for the terminal emulator on your workstation. Then set the TERM environment variable on the target system to match this setting.