$TERM set to empty string in debug-hooks environment results in bad UX

[Michael Skalka]

Currently within the debug-hooks environment the TERM environmental variable is not set. This results in some rough edges while performing debugging.

root@juju-7cdf35-3-lxd-1:~# env|grep TERM
TERM=
root@juju-7cdf35-3-lxd-1:~# clear
'': unknown terminal type.

It would be a nice QoL improvement to set TERM to something like `xterm`, or `xterm-256color` to enable some nice functionality (such as clearing the screen) without much effort.

[John A Meinel (jameinel)]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/tmux#Correct_the_TERM_variable_according_to_terminal_type

I wonder if we could put that into a tmux.conf for root, so when you run
debug-hooks it can try to figure it out? It seems the relevant line is:
set -g update-environment 'DISPLAY SSH_ASKPASS SSH_AGENT_PID SSH_CONNECTION
WINDOWID XAUTHORITY TERM'

We could potentially default to a given term like xterm, but the whole
point of TERM is it depends on who is on the other end of SSH (are you
running in gnome-terminal, or xterm, or cygwin's tty)

On Fri, Aug 2, 2019 at 10:10 AM Michael Skalka <email address hidden>
wrote:

> Public bug reported:
>
> Currently within the debug-hooks environment the TERM environmental
> variable is not set. This results in some rough edges while performing
> debugging.
>
> root@juju-7cdf35-3-lxd-1:~# env|grep TERM
> TERM=
> root@juju-7cdf35-3-lxd-1:~# clear
> '': unknown terminal type.
>
> It would be a nice QoL improvement to set TERM to something like
> `xterm`, or `xterm-256color` to enable some nice functionality (such as
> clearing the screen) without much effort.
>
> ** Affects: juju
> Importance: Undecided
> Status: New
>
> --
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> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1838772
>
> Title:
> $TERM set to empty string in debug-hooks environment results in bad UX
>
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[Dmitrii Shcherbakov (dmitriis)]

Editing code in-place for debugging purposes is a bit of a pain without TERM set correctly so I created this: https://github.com/juju/juju/pull/10720