How do you get TERM=screen-256color on CentOS 5.7?

CentOS 6.0 comes with the ability to set its TERM to screen-256color. It doesn't work in CentOS 5.7, though.

How can you get CentOS 5.7 to support screen-256color?

If you have a CentOS 6 box handy, you should be able to get the source of the terminfo file for screen-256color and then compile it on the CentOS 5 box.

Take a look at:

http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Text-Terminal-HOWTO-16.html

I haven't tried it, but something like this:

On the CentOS 6: infocmp screen-256color > /tmp/screen-256color.terminfo, then get the output file to the CentOS 5 box. On the CentOS 5 box, tic screen-256color.terminfo. From the man page, as root, that should place the compiled terminfo file into /usr/share/terminfo.

Of course, read documentation and man pages, etc.