xref: /freebsd-9.3-release/contrib/tcsh/FAQ

                                  [Home] FAQ

   Home | RecentChanges | Preferences
     _________________________________________________________________

   This is for people who do not read the manual!

   So  far  people who don't read manuals don't read this either... I may
   call  it README.*PLEASE* in the future, but then the same people won't
   be able to get ftp it... :-)
     _________________________________________________________________

   1. Where can I find tcsh sources?

   See http://www.tcsh.org/MostRecentRelease for download locations.
     _________________________________________________________________

   2. Why is the meta key broken in tcsh-5.20 and up?

   On  some  machines  the  tty is not set up to pass 8 bit characters by
   default.  Tcsh 5.19 used to try to determine if pass8 should be set by
   looking at the terminal's meta key. Unfortunately there is no good way
   of  determining  if  the terminal can really pass 8 characters or not.
   Consider  if  you  are  logged in through a modem line with 7 bits and
   parity  and  your  terminal  has  a meta key. Then tcsh 5.19 would set
   wrongly set pass8.

   If  you  did like the previous behavior you can add in /etc/csh.login,
   or in .login:

    if ( $?tcsh && $?prompt ) then
        if ( "`echotc meta`" == "yes" ) then
             stty pass8
        endif
    endif

   If you don't have pass8, maybe one of these would work..

    stty -parity -evenp -oddp cs8 -istrip   (rs6000)
    stty -parenb -istrip cs8

   Finally,  tcsh  will  bind  all  printable meta characters to the self
   insert  command.  If  you  don't  want  that  to  happen (i.e. use the
   printable meta characters for commands) setenv NOREBIND.
     _________________________________________________________________

   3.  I  ran 'dbxtool &' and 'shelltool &' from tcsh, and they end up in
   cbreak and no echo mode?

   These  programs  are broken. Background jobs should not try to look at
   the  tty.  What happens is that dbxtool looks in stderr to inherit the
   tty  setups,  but  tcsh  sets up the tty in cbreak and -echo modes, so
   that  it can do line editing. This cannot be fixed because tcsh cannot
   give away the tty. Pick one of the following as a workaround:

    dbxtool < /dev/null >& /dev/null &
    /usr/etc/setsid dbxtool &

   If that does not work, for dbxtool at least you can add "sh stty sane"
   in your .dbxinit
     _________________________________________________________________

   4. I tried to compile tcsh and it cannot find <locale.h>?

   Your  system  does  not support NLS. Undefine NLS in config_f.h and it
   should work fine.
     _________________________________________________________________

   5. Where can I get csh sources?

   Csh   sources   are   now   available   with   the  4.4BSD  networking
   distributions. You don't need csh sources to compile tcsh-6.0x.
     _________________________________________________________________

   6. I just made tcsh my login shell, and I cannot ftp any more?

   Newer  versions of the ftp daemon check for the validity of the user's
   shell  before  they  allow  logins.  The list of valid login shells is
   either  hardcoded or it is usually in a file called /etc/shells. If it
   is  hard-coded, then you are out of luck and your best bet is to get a
   newer  version of ftpd. Otherwise add tcsh to the list of shells. [For
   AIX  this  file  is called /etc/security/login.cfg.] Remember that the
   full  path  is  required.  If  there  is  no  /etc/shells, and you are
   creating  one,  remember to add /bin/csh, /bin/sh, and any other valid
   shells for your system, so that other people can ftp too :-)
     _________________________________________________________________

   7.  I  am  using  SunView or OpenWindows and editing is screwed up. In
   particular  my  arrow  keys  and backspace don't work right. What am I
   doing wrong?

   Well,  cmdtool tries to do its own command line editing and the effect
   you  get  is  one  of  using  an  editor inside an editor. Both try to
   interpret  the arrow key sequences and cmdtool wins since it gets them
   first. The solutions are in my order of preference:

    1. Don't use suntools
    2. Use shelltool instead of cmdtool.
    3. Unset edit in tcsh.
     _________________________________________________________________

   8. On a SPARCstation running Solaris 2.x and OpenWindows 3.1, inside a
   cmdtool,  the  short-cut  key  sequence  to  clear log (i.e. Meta-e or
   Diamond-e) doesn't work: it just echos 'e'; or 

   Unset edit in tcsh.
     _________________________________________________________________

   9. On a SPARCstation running Solaris 2.x and OpenWindows 3.1, maketool
   (within  SPARCworks)  doesn't work: it just does a `cd' to the working
   directory then stops.

   Unset  edit  in  tcsh. Using shelltool instead of cmdtool does not fix
   this.
     _________________________________________________________________

   10. I rlogin to another machine, and then no matter what I tell 'stty'
   I cannot get it to pass 8 bit characters?

   Maybe  you  need  to  use  'rlogin  -8'  to  tell rlogin to pass 8 bit
   characters.
     _________________________________________________________________

   11. Where do I get the public domain directory library?

   Anonymous ftp to prep.ai.mit.edu:/pub/gnu/dirent.tar.Z
     _________________________________________________________________

   12.  I  compiled  tcsh  using  gcc, and when I start up it says: tcsh:
   Warning  no  access  to tty (Invalid Argument). Thus no job control in
   this shell

   Your  <sys/ioctl.h>  file  is  not  ansi  compliant. You have one of 3
   choices:

    1. Run fixincludes from the gcc distribution.
    2. Add -traditional to the gcc flags.
    3. Compile with cc.
     _________________________________________________________________

   13.  I  compiled tcsh with the SunOS unbundled compiler and now things
   get echo'ed twice.

   It is a bug in the unbundled optimizer. Lower the optimization level.
     _________________________________________________________________

   14. How can I use the arrow keys with hpterm?

   Hp terminals use the arrow keys internally. You can tell hpterm not to
   do that, by sending it the termcap sequence smkx. Since this has to be
   done  all  the  time,  the  easiest thing is to put it as an alias for
   precmd, or inside the prompt:

    if ($term == "hp") then
        set prompt="%{`echotc smkx`%}$prompt"
    endif

   Note that by doing that you cannot use pgup and pgdn to scroll... Also
   if you are using termcap, replace "smkx" with "ks"...
     _________________________________________________________________

   15.  On POSIX machines ^C and ^Z will do not work when tcsh is a login
   shell?

   Make sure that the interrupt character is set to ^C and suspend is set
   to  ^Z;  'stty -a' will show you the current stty settings; 'stty intr
   ^C susp ^Z' will set them to ^C and ^Z respectively.
     _________________________________________________________________

   16.  I  am trying to compile tcsh and I am getting compile errors that
   look like:

    >sh.c:???: `STR???' undeclared, outside of functions [gcc]
    >"sh.c", line ???: STR??? undefined [cc]

   You  interrupted make, while it was making the automatically generated
   headers. Type 'make clean; make'
     _________________________________________________________________

   17. On the cray, sometimes the CR/LF mapping gets screwed up.

   You  are  probably  logged  in  to the cray via telnet. Cray's telnetd
   implements  line  mode  selection the telnet client you are using does
   not  implement  telnet line mode. This cause the Cray's telnetd to try
   to use KLUDGELINEMODE. You can turn off telnet line mode from the cray
   side  by doing a "stty -extproc", or you can get the Cray AIC to build
   a  telnetd  without  KLUDGELINEMODE,  or  you can compile a new telnet
   client  (from  the  BSD net2 tape), or at least on the suns use: 'mode
   character'.
     _________________________________________________________________

   18.  On AU/X, I made tcsh my startup shell, but the mac desktop is not
   starting up (no X11 or Finder), and I only get console emulation.

   This is another manifestation of item 5. Just add the pathname to tcsh
   in /etc/shells and everything should work fine.
     _________________________________________________________________

   19.  On  machines  that  use  YP (NIS) tilde expansion might end up in
   /dev/null

   If  this happens complain to your vendor, to get a new version of NIS.
   You can fix that in tcsh by defining YPBUGS in config.h
     _________________________________________________________________

   20.  Script on SGI 4.0.5 does not give us a tty, so we cannot have job
   control.

   Their csh does not have job control either. Try:

        % script
        % cat > /dev/tty
     _________________________________________________________________

   21. I start tcsh and it takes a couple of minutes to get the prompt.

   You  have  defined  REMOTEHOST  and your DNS is not responding. Either
   undefine REMOTEHOST and recompile or fix your DNS.
     _________________________________________________________________

   22. If you need help generating your .cshrc file, check out:

        http://www.imada.sdu.dk/~blackie/dotfile/

   or
        http://www.dotfiles.com
     _________________________________________________________________

   23.  On  POSIX  systems  the  kernel  will send hup signals to all the
   processes in the foreground process group if 'stty hupcl' is set.

   For example

    ./tcsh
    echo $$
    591
    ./tcsh
    kill -6 591

   Will kill everything, since hup will be sent to all tcsh processes. To
   avoid that you can set stty -hupcl, but it is not recommended.
     _________________________________________________________________

   24. When I rsh the meta key stops working on the remote machine.

   Try  using rsh -8; this option is undocumented on some systems, but it
   works.  If  that does not work, get and use ssh/sshd. You'll be better
   off from a security point of view anyway.
     _________________________________________________________________

   25.  Tcsh  compiled  under  hp/ux-10.x  does  not pass resource limits
   correctly when ran on hp/ux-11.x systems.

   This  is  a  problem  with  lack  of ABI compatibility between the two
   systems. The only solution is to recompile.
     _________________________________________________________________

   26. Refreshing in command line editing can appear broken on some OS's

   This  is  because  the  termcap/terminfo  description  lies  about the
   ability  of  the  terminal  to  use tabs. At least on Compaq/DEC Alpha
   OSF/1 3.x and 4.x systems, stty -tabs will cause problems.
     _________________________________________________________________

   27. Where can I learn the merits of tcsh vs. bash vs. csh vs. sh etc?

   You  can  read  the  manual page section titled [NEW FEATURES] listing
   features that tcsh adds to csh.

   You  can read Tom Christiansen's [Csh Programming Considered Harmful],
   a  document advocating that csh (and by extension, tcsh) should not be
   used for writing shell scripts.

   XXX:  Need  to  find something about [bash], but bash is sh-compatible
   and  has  many  of  the  same  interactive  features  of tcsh (command
   completion does not appear to be as flexible, though).

   [Curtains  up:  introducing  the Z shell] has a pretty good rundown on
   zsh.  Aside  from  the arguments about csh being evil, tcsh appears to
   compare  well  with zsh [zsh]. Zsh is sh and ksh compatible, with many
   of the interactive features of tcsh.
     _________________________________________________________________

   28.  Why  does  FreeBSD's  tcsh do history browsing differently than I
   expect?

   On    FreeBSD,    by    default,    the    up    arrow   is   set   to
   "history-search-backward",  rather than the default "up-history". As a
   result,  if  you  type (part of) a word and press up arrow, you'll see
   previous  commands  that  match  the  prefix. Pretty useful, actually,
   although  it  takes  some  getting used to. You can use bindkey to see
   your settings, and to rebind up & down differently if desired.
     _________________________________________________________________

   Everything else is a bug :-(

   Christos
     _________________________________________________________________

   Home | RecentChanges | Preferences
   Edit text of this page | View other revisions
   Last edited April 29, 2004 15:02 (diff)
   Search: ____________________