[rescue] Terminal Insanity

[Jonathan C. Patschke]

I have a DEC VT420 terminal that I use for a console on a fairly single-
minded computer.  That computer's only purpose (right now) is to act as
an SSH terminal to my server in Austin.

For the last few months, things have been working great.  I log in, I
ssh over, my .profile detects that I'm using the VT420 and sets TERM,
LINES, and COLUMNS correctly, and then launches screen -R, giving me my
"desktop" back.

Starting last night, every curses and ncurses app on the system started
ignoring LINES and COLUMNS.  Everything's 80x24, regardless of what I
set those environment variables to, and an 80x24 vim session looks
pretty silly on a 132x48 terminal.

I'm going to give the typical luser defense here ("But, I didn't change
anything!"), and, as far as I can tell, the timestamps of the essential
files (~/.profile, /usr/lib32/lib*curse*, /usr/share/terminfo/*,
/etc/termcap) back me up.

've checked the terminal's stored settings, and they all look right,
too.  Everything's just as it was two days ago.

Any ideas on what I might have inadvertendtly broken?  Both the
terminal's host and the remote server are SGIs running IRIX 6.5.8.

--
Jonathan Patschke
   > Can you SysAdmins tell me what might go on in a typical day?
   Hours of endless frustration punctuated by moments of sheer terror.
                                 --Saul Tannenbaum (in the Monastery)