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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-06-04T21:09:44+00:00

I work on a NetBSD system through an ssh connection from my Mac and

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I work on a NetBSD system through an ssh connection from my Mac and I want to use the screen utility so that I can start processes and come back to them after my terminal connection has been interrupted. When I type screen I get the error message:

Cannot find termcap entry for 'xterm-256color'

After looking through forum posts, I thought it had something to do with termcap on the remote machine, but that appears not to be the case; I can initiate screen with no errors from an ssh session from another computer, one to which I don’t generally have access. This suggests that I need to configure something on my local machine, but I haven’t been able to figure out what or how. Although this post is tagged “gnu-screen” I suspect that I’m working with Berkeley screen, though I don’t know whether that is a significant distinction.

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  1. Editorial Team

    Quick fix: run TERM=xterm screen instead of screen.

    You get the error because on your mac you have TERM=xterm-256color, and xterm-256color is not in the remote machine’s termcap. You don’t get the error when you connect from the other computer because it has its TERM variable set to something else.

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