nano error: Error opening terminal: xterm-256color

After the installation of OSX Lion, I tried to:

nano /etc/apt/sources.list

But I get this error:

Error opening terminal: xterm-256color

If I try to switch terminal.app preferences to open terminal windows in "xterm color" instead of xterm-256color everything works fine.

What's happening?

On Red Hat this worked for me:

export TERM=xterm

further info here: http://www.cloudfarm.it/fix-error-opening-terminal-xterm-256color-unknown-terminal-type/

After upgrading to OSX Lion, I started getting this error on certain (Debian/Ubuntu) servers. The fix is simply to install the “ncurses-term” package which provides the file /usr/share/terminfo/x/xterm-256color.

This worked for me on a Ubuntu server, via Erik Osterman.

I can confirm this is a terminfo issue. This is what worked for me. SSH in to the remote machine and run

 sudo apt-get install ncurses-term

Boom. Problem solved.