nano Error opening terminal: xterm-256color.

Link to terminfo: http://www.sendspace.com/file/hc2dus

If you would rather grab the files from the Lion installer:

1. Download Lion Installer from the App Store

2. Download unpkg: http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/16357/unpkg

3. Open Lion Installer app in Finder (Right click -> Show Package Contents)

4. Open InstallESD.dmg (under SharedSupport)

5. Unpack BSD.pkg with unpkg (Located under Packages)

Term info will be located in the new BSD folder in /usr/share/terminfo

Hi,

That suggestion is great, but now, I cannot change my Terminal preferences. Any of the changes I make do not seem to have any effect. I want to get rid of the Grass c/s, but cannot no matter what I do. Is there a way to reset the terminal to the default?

My solution was to find the terminfo file for xterm-color:

ls -lR /usr/share/terminfo

For me it was in subdirectory 78. Then duplicate it with a new name:

cd /usr/share/terminfo/78

sudo cp -p xterm-color xterm-256color

Cheers

Dave

Changing preferences to xterm-color or other terminal emulations seems to be a work around this bug with Terminal.app.

I've been using OSX lion for over a year now and I'm suprised that this issue with terminal has not been fixed.

I remember that when I first encountered the issue it took me about a day to work out what was wrong with macos terminal.

I still find sysadmins who are prelexed by this problem and just give up and use remote desktop sessions to get around the issue.

I had the same issue and fixed it by copying /usr/share/terminfo from a working install of OSX Lion and replacing the 256colorless version.

Thanks, jhulme!

I had the same issue, fixed by copying /usr/share/terminfo from a friend's Lion machine (an upgrade from Snow Leopard) to my stock Lion MacBook Air.

i have this problem too...but no friends with lion! please can you share your terminfo? thanks a lot

Another option is to just switch to "xterm-color" in Terminal preferences.

thanks a lot jhulme, it works perfectly!

after a reboot i always have to manually replace the folder..do you have that problem?

It appears I haven't rebooted my macbook since Lion came out 😝

Try running chmod 555 /usr/share/terminfo

This has fixed it for me.

perfect, thanks again 😀

sudo chmod 644 /usr/share/terminfo

Should allow edits; if not use sudo chmod +rw /usr/share/terminfo

I tried that. No joy. I wound-up doing a Time machine restore of my OS from a previous backup.

Thanks

...or a restore of the folder you replaced, and not the entire os...

btw, i had no problem with the trick.

hope apple would repair this problem in next updates.