tmux: open terminal failed: missing or unsuitable terminal: xterm-256color
I used home-brew to setup tmux on a mac. When trying to run tmux I keep on getting this error
open terminal failed: missing or unsuitable terminal: xterm-256color
any suggestions?
Your system doesn't have xterm-256color
. You could:
-
Set
TERM
to something other thanxterm-256color
outsidetmux
(try just plainexport TERM=xterm
). -
See if there is a package containing
xterm-256color
, perhaps a later version of ncurses or terminfo. -
Install it manually from another system with something like:
infocmp -x xterm-256color > out
Then transfer the "out" file to your Mac and try:
tic out
This happened to me during a system upgrade. Unfortunately I did not see a way besides restarting: tmux kill-server
and then run tmux
.
you can just type export TERM=xterm
in console when you see this error, or put export TERM=xterm
in the file ~/.bash_profile
and source ~/.bash_profile
. then you may never get this error again.
This works fine on my debian.
TL;DL
sudo ln -sf /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-color /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-256color
Details
Maybe the file /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-256color
is corrupted. It may be fixed upon (system/package) upgrade / reinstall.
Meanwhile you can use other terminfo entry. You can get the available options by ls /usr/share/terminfo/x
.
I am having the same problem and using xterm-16color
meanwhile.
To set terminfo, you can type reset
in the terminal, then select the terminfo:
username:~$ cd /usr/share/terminfo/x
username:x$ ls
x10term xnuppc+200x64 xterm-24 xterm+pcfkeys
x1700 xnuppc-200x64-m xterm-256color xterm-pcolor
x1700-lm xnuppc-200x75 xterm+256color xterm-r5
...
username:x$ reset
reset: unknown terminal type xterm-256color
Terminal type? xterm-16color
=== Edit 2018 Feb 20 ===
You should config the term in many places if you want to make to permantent, for example, .vimrc, .tmux.config, .Xresources, e.t.c.
I still have issue when using terminator -x 'tmux attach -t music; exec bash'
So I'm using a quick hack as below:
cd /usr/share/terminfo/x
sudo mv xterm-256color xterm-256color.bk
sudo ln -sf /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-color /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-256color