My desktop computer runs Windows 2000 with cygwin to contact other computers. Now the linux boxes often complains by saying that terminal type "cygwin" is not recognized. I think this is due to cygwin not being registered in the remote host terminfo database.

What I did to resolve the situation was particularly easy (since I have root access on both computers):

JUST copy file /usr/share/terminfo/c/cygwin from the cygwin (Windows) computer to /usr/share/terminfo/c/cygwin in the remote host.

That solves the problem.

My questions:

1. in case we don't have root access, how to solve this? I think we could use $HOME/.terminfo subdirectory to contain the compiled terminfo descriptors for our own purposes.

2. terminfo descriptor for "cygwin" terminal wasn't found in Mandrake 10 distro. Why is this?

3. The Redhat systems have cygwin in the terminfo database. But their terminfo is messed up when I used the remote session to display pine. Can anybody help me in this?

The "cygwin" terminal type is cygwin's emulation of a UNIX terminal in a windows "dos box". Since it's not a "standard" terminal type, it's not included in a lot of terminfo databases.

One solution: install Cygwin X.org and run Xterm. All terminfo databases should support xterm.