Intalled the mailx-8.1.1-16 security fix, seems like the new "short list" of environment variables mailx now looks at is a little too short, and terminal config info isn't being seen by mailx. Practical result is that pressing the backspace key at the & prompt prints junk instead of doing a backspace operation -- one must literally type control-H now to do a backspace. The shell and all other apps still handle backspace fine, as does other RedHat machines with older mailx's. FYI, I think this alias is what's setting up the behavior of interest here (ts gets run in .login) ... alias ts 'set noglob ; eval `tset -Q -s -e^H -k^U \!*`'