Missing dependency: emacs does not pull any package providing /usr/share/terminfo/e/eterm-color

[Jorge Morais]

I tried to run dpkg-reconfigure inside emacs' terminal emulator - M-x term.
It said:

Unknown terminal: eterm-color
Check the TERM environment variable.
Also make sure that the terminal is defined in the terminfo database.
Alternatively, set the TERMCAP environment variable to the desired
termcap entry.
debconf: whiptail output the above errors, giving up!

With Google, I found that '/usr/share/terminfo/e/eterm-color' is provided by
ncurses-term. I installed it, solving the problem.

So the package emacs24 (I have not checked other emacs versions) should
'recommend' (or at least 'suggest') ncurses-term (or another package that
solves the problem.

UPDATE: This bug also occurs on a new installation of Ubuntu 15.04. Yesterday I installed Ubuntu 15.04 in Virtualbox, installed aptitude and emacs, and the only configuration I changed was the network proxy (so I did not change anything that would change TERM). The bug occurred.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 13.10
Package: emacs24 24.3+1-1ubuntu3
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.13.0-12.32-generic 3.13.4
Uname: Linux 3.13.0-12-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.12.5-0ubuntu2.2
Architecture: amd64
Date: Thu Feb 27 17:46:00 2014
MarkForUpload: True
SourcePackage: emacs24
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to saucy on 2013-11-02 (117 days ago)

[era (era)]

I don't think there is anything in the standard install which would set TERM to eterm-color. Do you have personal initialization files which override the system TERM? How is Emacs connected to your display and keyboard (Unity, Gnome, bare Linux terminal ...?)

(Tempted to set this to status: "Incomplete" but not able to verify on Ubuntu 13.10 at the moment. If anybody with access to a Saucy image can chime in here, that would be appreciated.)

[Jorge Morais (jorgemorais)]

Replying to comment #2: this bug also occurs in a new installation of Ubuntu 15.04. Yesterday I installed Ubuntu 15.04 in Virtualbox, installed aptitude and emacs, and the only configuration I changed was the proxy (so I did not change anything that would change TERM).

[era (era)]

So you are running the GUI version of Emacs, running in Unity? You start it from the Unity menu (emacs.desktop)?

[Jorge Morais (jorgemorais)]

Yes, I use graphical Emacs (I don't supply the -nw command line option). IIRC, when I last reproduced the bug (in a virtual machine) I started it via the command emacs from a terminal. Now I lost access to the virtual machine (its host had a hardware problem).

[era (era)]

I can confirm that M-x xterm in emacs24 sets TERM to eterm-color when launched out of the box on Ubuntu 15.04. (In the regular terminal, it's simply xterm.)

Whether this should be fixed in the packaging (make it not set eterm-color) or dependencies (pull in ncurses-term) is an open question, though.

Inside xterm, e.g. "sudo dpkg-reconfigure -plow dictionaries-common" is a way to trigger the bug. With ncurses-term installed, I get a "nice" colorful ncurses dialog box; without it, dpkg-reconfigure aborts.

Another obvious workaround is to specify a nongraphical Debconf front-end.

sudo DEBIAN_FRONTEND=readline dpkg-reconfigure -plow dictionaries-common

[era (era)]

As of the current Emacs sources, https://github.com/emacs-mirror/emacs/blob/master/lisp/term.el#L1472 contains

  (defvar term-term-name "eterm-color"

so there really is an explicit setting in the upstream sources which hardcodes this. With that, I guess I agree that emacs24 should "Suggests: ncurses-term".

[era (era)]

Forwarded upstream; https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=790402

[era (era)]

(Sorry, where I wrote xterm, I meant M-x term!)