Bug 492729

Summary:	No intuitive use of scrollback buffer in Fedora currently
Product:	[Fedora] Fedora	Reporter:	Robert Scheck <redhat-bugzilla>
Component:	screen	Assignee:	Miroslav Lichvar <mlichvar>
Status:	CLOSED DUPLICATE	QA Contact:	Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	11	CC:	faisy, mlichvar, thoger
Target Milestone:	---
Target Release:	---
Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Bug Fix
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2009-09-25 12:42:23 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Robert Scheck 2009-03-28 22:12:40 UTC

Description of problem:
There's currently no intuitive use of the scrollback buffer in Fedora currently.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
screen-4.0.3-12

How reproducible:
Everytime, see above and below.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. yum install screen
2. screen
3. cd /etc && ls -l
4. Try to use "Shift+PgUp" to get the scrollback buffer - doesn't work.
  
Actual results:
There's currently no intuitive use of the scrollback buffer in Fedora currently.

Expected results:
My colleague suggests the following changes to the default screen configuration 
file, please evaluate and change maybe for the next screen package build:

[root@localhost ~]# diff -u /etc/screenrc.orig /etc/screenrc
--- /etc/screenrc.orig  2009-01-29 10:36:01.000000000 +0100
+++ /etc/screenrc       2009-01-29 11:05:53.000000000 +0100
@@ -63,7 +63,7 @@
 # we do not want the width to change to 80 characters on startup:
 # on suns, /etc/termcap has :is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;3;4;6l:
 termcap xterm 'is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;4;6l'
-terminfo xterm 'is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;4;6l'
+#terminfo xterm 'is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;4;6l'

 #
 # Do not use xterms alternate window buffer.
@@ -145,7 +145,7 @@

 #80/132 column switching must be enabled for ^AW to work
 #change init sequence to not switch width
-termcapinfo  xterm Z0=\E[?3h:Z1=\E[?3l:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;4;6l
+#termcapinfo  xterm Z0=\E[?3h:Z1=\E[?3l:is=\E[r\E[m\E[2J\E[H\E[?7h\E[?1;4;6l

 # Make the output buffer large for (fast) xterms.
 #termcapinfo xterm* OL=10000
[root@localhost ~]#

Comment 1 Robert Scheck 2009-05-10 23:17:59 UTC

Miroslav, ping?

Comment 2 Miroslav Lichvar 2009-05-11 07:14:56 UTC

Are you sure it won't break something else? Also, binding shift+{up,down} keys to screen scrollback buffer could be more useful, the buffer in terminal emulator is quite confusing after switching to another virtual terminal.

I have seen a discussion on upstream list about making a better default config, maybe it would be better to discuss this upstream too.

Comment 3 Bug Zapper 2009-06-09 12:46:53 UTC

This bug appears to have been reported against 'rawhide' during the Fedora 11 development cycle.
Changing version to '11'.

More information and reason for this action is here:
http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/BugZappers/HouseKeeping

Comment 4 Tomas Hoger 2009-09-16 09:56:38 UTC

Robert, have you tried un-commenting lines below this comment in the default screenrc:

# Do not use xterms alternate window buffer.
# This one would not add lines to the scrollback buffer.

With all the terminals I've used, it makes Shift-Pg{Up,Down} work.  Of course, switching screen's windows will trash that scrollback as was noted in comment #2, but is quite sufficient for me.

Comment 5 Miroslav Lichvar 2009-09-25 12:42:23 UTC

The suggested changes in comment #0 don't seem to fix this issue. I commented them out with few others in screen-4.0.3-15.fc12 though.

The problem is that xterm's alternate screen doesn't use scroll buffer. A workaround is to disable alternate screen by modifying ti string (as in comment #4) or xterm's titeInhibit resource.

*** This bug has been marked as a duplicate of bug 123504 ***