Re: LYNX-DEV lynx crashes on all terminals except the console

[Klaus Weide]

On Mon, 4 Aug 1997, Michal Rumsey wrote:

> I am having this strange problem such that i can always run lynx from any
> of the 6 virtual consoles on my linux box (slackware 3.0, kernel 1.2.13),
> yet I cannot successfully run lynx from any other terminal, whether it be
> (1) an xterm at the console; (2) a hardwired DEC vt220 (via null modem);
> (3) a vt102 telnetted into the local host (ppp connection on /dev/ttyS3).
> 
> Lynx successfully locates every remote host that I attempt as a starting
> point, downloads the entire HTML source, then crashes.  The error message
> that I get is as follows:
>       lynx: Start file could not be found or is not text/html or
> text/plain  Exiting...

That is not a "crash", if you get only that message.  However, Lynx
exiting with this message shouldn't have anything to do with what
kind of terminal you are using, so something must be very messed up.

You have described your system(s) and what you have tried, but haven't
said anything about the lynx binary - what version, where you got it,
and how it was compiled (if you know).

> reference these two hostnames for the rest of this detail
> my localhost = dino
> remotehost = darkstar.cortland.edu
> 
> I have compared my /etc/termcap entries with darkstar which does work
> properly - even copied that termcap to dino - and this does not seem to
> affect anything.  I changed my terminal settings more times than I can
> count, trying to find one that works, but to no avail.  

Are you sure lynx is trying to use entries from termcap at all, rather
than looking for terminfo files?  I think that depends on how curses or
ncurses (which one is used?) are set up, but "normally" they use terminfo
files.  (You may have them under /usr/lib/terminfo or similar.)
How is the TERM environment variable set in each case?  Try to set it
explicitly to something else (I am not sure whether that is what you mean
with "changed my terminal settings").

Normally, the terminal type for the linux console should be "linux" (used
to be different), for a VT200 "vt220" etc. - this assumes "normal"
conventions, Slackware 3.0 may have some different ideas.

> I tried modifying
> the character set used by my lynx.cfg file, and I have tried using the
> lynx flag -force_html.  I installed lynx in /usr/local/bin, if this makes
> any difference, however this was not compiled specifically for my machine
> (I know next to nothing about which flags I am going to have to give lynx
> should I compile it myself).  I thought that using darkstar's lynx binary
> should work, since both dino and darkstar are running slackware linux on
> i486/66's, using ELF binaries. 
> 
> Can anyone give me a clue as to what could be causing the problem - or
> better yet, provide me with a solution?
> 
> There is also another problem, which is simply a nuissance..  lynx run
> from darkstar displays links in boldface and the selected link in
> reverse-video; but when I copy this binary and the lynx.cfg to the same
> respective locations on dino and run it locally, all links are displayed
> in reverse-video... any idea on how to force it to display correctly once
> it's on my end?  Again, any help on this would be greatly appreciated.
> Thanks in advance. 

It seems that those two macines don't have the same set of terminfo or
termcap files.  Or the terminal type (TERM variable) is just not set the
same way.  You may also have to play with the TERMINFO variable, to direct
(n)curses to look for terminfo files in the right place.

Yes, the same binary should behave the same way on two different machines
*if* these two machines are set up the same way in all respects - which
most likely is not the case.  Anyway, compiling Lynx is no big deal,
especially for linux.  For one thing, you can make sure that you have
a recent version.  There a a lot of things that can be configured, but
most come with reasonable defaults or can be changed later in lynx.cfg.
You may want to get the latest development code from
<http://sol.slcc.edu/lynx/current/>, it has a configure script which
will try to figure some settings out for you automatically.  (See the
included file README.configure if you do.)  Also I recommend that you
install a recent version of either SLang or ncurses (if you don't
have them already) before compiling Lynx (see Makefile or makefile.in
from the Lynx source for locations).

    Klaus


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