Obscure error on macOS when connected to remote - WARNING: terminal is not fully functional

[karlnyr]

Hi,

Very fresh to using ghostty and wondering if anyone could help me troubleshoot an error that I seem to be getting when using quite basic commands on my VERY old server?

I dont know what you may need in terms of background, but here is an attempt of a start at least:

I am using a mac machine:

Apple M2
macOS: 15.6.1

I am connected to our old work horse of a cluster:

Rocks 7.0 Manzanita (CentOS 7.4)

---

When I use less on remote:

[15:26] [user@cluster:~] [base]  $ touch test.txt
[15:26] [user@cluster:~] [base]  $ less test.txt
WARNING: terminal is not fully functional
[15:26] [user@cluster:~] [base]  $ clear
terminals database is inaccessible
[15:26] [user@cluster:~] [base]  $

Symptoms: Unable to use keys to move around in less. Seems to work with vim like movements (j, k, ctrl+d, ctrl+u, etc.). No highlighting when searching for text.

The command works as expected when running this locally.

---

I have tried to enable the shell-integration-features using:

shell-integration-features = ssh-terminfo,ssh-env

After connecting, I gained the message:

Setting up xterm-ghostty terminfo on remote...

However, the error persists.

Any help is very much appreciated!

[pluiedev]

Have you tried to manually upload the terminfo file (see https://ghostty.org/docs/help/terminfo for detailed steps)?

[karlnyr]

I will give this a go!

[karlnyr]

Hi,

I looked into https://ghostty.org/docs/help/terminfo and performed the manual steps (although I thought this was automatic if I set shell-integration-features = ssh-terminfo,ssh-env).

I got the warning that the documentation said I could safely ignore. However, the error persists.

One thing, when I run the command, I do not run it for the whole server, as I am scared what would happen if I would do this for all users. Meaning, that my command looks something like infocmp -x xterm-ghostty | ssh user@server_name -- tic -x -. Could this be the issue? Are there any dangers to not specifying my users and doing this as suggested by the documentation?

[mitchellh]

Note I'm marking the terminfo answer because it is a terminfo issue here.