Beyond Linux® From Scratch (System V Edition) - Version r12.4-426

Chapter 24. Graphical Environments

xterm-403

Introduction to xterm

xterm is a terminal emulator for the X Window System.

This package is provided for testing the completed Xorg installation.

[Note]

Note

Development versions of BLFS may not build or run some packages properly if LFS or dependencies have been updated since the most recent stable versions of the books.

Package Information

xterm Dependencies

Required

luit-20250912

Required (at runtime)

A monospace TTF or OTF font such as Dejavu fonts

Optional

Emacs-30.2, Valgrind-3.26.0 and man2html

Installation of xterm

Install xterm by running the following commands: 

sed -i '/v0/{n;s/new:/new:kb=^?:/}' termcap &&
printf '\tkbs=\\177,\n' >> terminfo &&

TERMINFO=/usr/share/terminfo \
./configure $XORG_CONFIG     \
            --with-app-defaults=/etc/X11/app-defaults &&

make

This package does not come with a test suite.

Now, as the root user: 

make install &&

mkdir -pv /usr/share/applications &&
cp -v *.desktop /usr/share/applications/

Command Explanations

sed -i ... termcap, printf ... >> terminfo: These commands modify the terminal description so that the Backspace key is expected to send the character with ASCII code 127. This is done for consistency with the Linux console.

TERMINFO=/usr/share/terminfo: This ensures that the xterm terminfo files are installed to the system terminfo database.

--with-app-defaults=...: Sets the location for the app-defaults directory.

Configuring xterm

There are two ways to configure xterm. You can add the X resource definitions to the user's ~/.Xresources file, or add them to the system-wide $XORG_PREFIX/share/X11/app-defaults/Xterm file.

In order for xterm to follow the locale settings in the environment, use TrueType fonts, and follow the Linux convention about the code sent by the Backspace key, add the following definitions as the root user: 

cat >> /etc/X11/app-defaults/XTerm << "EOF"
*VT100*locale: true
*VT100*faceName: Monospace
*VT100*faceSize: 10
*backarrowKeyIsErase: true
*ptyInitialErase: true
EOF

Contents

Installed Programs: koi8rxterm, resize, uxterm, and xterm
Installed Libraries: None
Installed Directories: None

Short Descriptions

koi8rxterm

is a wrapper script to set up xterm with a KOI8-R locale

resize

prints a shell command for setting the TERM and TERMCAP environment variables to indicate the current size of xterm window

uxterm

is a wrapper script that modifies the current locale to use UTF-8 and starts xterm with the proper settings

xterm

is a terminal emulator for the X Window System