Advanced shell programming
Overview
Sending and trapping
signals
Signal names
Functions
Aliases
The 'exec' mechanism
The 'eval' mechanism
Sending data across networks
Sending
printable characters
Splitting
files
Makefiles
Safe
programming
Setting up a terminal
More on
files
Miscellaneous utilities
Summary
Exercises
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Setting up a terminal
We have assumed that your system administrator has set up your
terminal and the system so that the terminal will work. This is a
very reasonable expectation, but sometimes you may need to
communicate with a UNIX machine from an unusual terminal that has
not been set up for you. If you have a problem with your terminal,
then in the normal course of events it can be corrected using
tput; this will not help though if the system does not
already have all the information it needs about the terminal.
The command stty is used to specify to the UNIX
system the characteristics both of the terminal and of the
communication device linking the terminal and the system. However,
be careful using stty - mistakes may be difficult to
correct. Clearly, if you cannot communicate at all with the UNIX
system, stty is of no use to you. If you can get the
system as far as reading a line containing stty, you
are then in a position to correct such things as the size of
terminal screen that UNIX thinks you have, which control characters
are matched to which keys, and so on. Try this command with option
-a to display the current settings for your terminal.
You will get several lines of output, which will look something
like:
$ stty -a
speed 9600 baud; rows 25; columns 80; line = 2; intr = ^C;
...
-parenb -parodd cs8 -hupcl -cstopb cread -clocal -crtscts
...
In this instance, the terminal has 25 rows and 80 columns and
communicates with the processors at 9600 baud
(baud is 'bits per second'). The keystroke necessary to send an
interrupt signal SIGINT is ctrl-C. Look at
the manual page for stty to discover the meaning of
the other information it displays. In order to change any of the
settings, follow stty by the setting you wish to
change and its new value. For example, to cause your terminal to
have a width of only 30 character columns, you should type:
$ stty columns 30
If you try this example, remember to reset the terminal to its
original settings afterwards.
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