Setting TERM

[Dave Curry]

The /etc/ttytype file goes away under 4.3BSD in favor of a nifty new
/etc/ttys file.  The format is

	tty25	"/etc/getty adm.9600"	adm5      on  secure

which says tty25 should have a getty started up on it, and that the
getty should be for an ADM (Lear Siegler) series terminal at 9600
baud.  The TERM variable should be set to "adm5", the terminal is
"on" (logins permitted), and is secure (root may log in on it).

You can run any program on the terminal this way, and set anything
for the TERM variable.  Since rlogin(1) passes TERM through the
net, this essentially makes tset, etc. unnecessary except for
dialups and initialization strings.  The "adm" part lets you use
/etc/gettytab, which is kind of like termcap -- you can send
different clear-screen sequences, etc. to different types of
terminals.

The best part, of course, is that the whole mess is human-readable.

--Dave Curry