[Midnight Commander] Couple of issues
 

Hello

I'm having a couple of issues using Midnight Commander 4.7.0.9 on an embedded Linux device running Debian 6:

1. After logging on through SSH, I wanted to configure MC to provide smooth scrolling. As there was none in /etc/mc/, I created /etc/mc/mc.ini with the relevant instruction (panel_scroll_pages=0), logged on, logged back on: Smooth scrolling still doesn't work.

2. Altough the Putty SSH client is configured to use xterm as on the Linux host, MC displays some strange characters. See the attachement.

Any idea how to solve those issues?

Thank you.

Ad 1) Settings in /etc/mc/mc.ini are read only if there are no config in user home directory. If you even once started mc, then they will be not read. Logging off is not necessary, just closing all user mc instances is enough.

Ad 2) It looks like incorrect fonts on Debian or Putty config. Try to set other by "setfont", available fonts should be in "/usr/shared/consolefonts". Check also TERM and LANG environment variables. Check that you use the same character set on Putty and Debian (I think default is UTF8).

Thanks for the infos about the fonts. Since it works OK on Ubuntu, I'll check how they're configured there. As a work around:
1. In Putty/Kitty, load settings for this host
2. Window > Translation: Change "Remote set translation" from "ISO-8859-1 Latin 1, West Europe" to "UTF-8"

As for smooth scrolling, still no go:
1. Ran "ps aux | grep mc" to check that it wasn't running
2. Removed the user-specific configuration file: cd ; rm -Rf ./.mc/
3. Checked system-wide configuration: cat /etc/mc/mc.ini : panel_scroll_pages=0
4. Ran mc: Still no smooth scrolling

About the strange characters, I was having this problem in run level 3. I posted a thread and learned I needed to install unicode. I was not, however, having this problem in X. I can't help you with smooth scrolling. For me just using the directional keys works. My two cents worth in case you ever run a console outside X. Good luck!

I don't know if this helps you, but running Midnight Commander with the following syntax is a useful workaround on a local box with font issues:-

mc -a

I've been having this problem with it for years on my Debian box :)

Installing unicode fixes that.

Thanks for the tip about "mc -a". It's a quick work-around, although I'll check how to install Unicode on an appliance running Debian.

What about MC not supporting smooth scrolling, even after going through the steps I wrote?

FWIW, I'm connecting to the Debian appliance through SSH, not logged on on the console.

Yes, I know, but I run a mixed Debian stable and unstable system and I had issues with some terminal emulators while others worked fine. I couldn't manage to easily make it work and so I just figured the workaround was easier for my purposes.

Very well, then. Have you thought about editing your /home/user/.bashrc file with this line?

I haven't and don't really use Midnight Commander enough to justify it, but thanks for the tip, I hadn't thought of doing that.