Weird screen formatting in vim on Alma only

General Discussion & Chat
1

I know this is probably some simple setting but vim under Alma doesn’t seem to handle xterm the same as RH and Rocky. Everything looks the same, vim-minimal and vim-enhanced behave the same way. If I edit a file on RH, the formatting is fine, if I hit “:” I get a prompt followed by an empty line. On Alma, if I hit “:” I get (example) :postfix/main.cf" 738L, 29434B . The line isn’t cleared. This happens in the main window too, there are residual lines and text that shouldn’t be there and aren’t if I reset the window. This makes it very hard to safely edit files. Seeing this on all my Raspberry Pi Alma systems, haven’t tried it on x86. Any ideas?

2

This issue on AlmaLinux with Vim is almost certainly tied to terminal handling rather than Vim itself. On Raspberry Pi builds, the terminfo database and $TERM environment variable don’t line up correctly, so Vim doesn’t clear the command line or screen buffer properly. That’s why you see residual text like :postfix/main.cf instead of a clean prompt.Incorrect TERM setting: AlmaLinux Pi defaults to xterm or xterm-256color, but the console emulator doesn’t fully support those capabilities.Missing terminfo entries: The ncurses terminfo shipped with AlmaLinux Pi may lack proper definitions for alternate screen buffer or line clearing.Different console behavior: The Pi framebuffer console behaves differently than x86 systems, so Rocky/RHEL don’t show the same bug.:computer_disk:

bash or terminal

  • export TERM=linux
export TERM=screen-256color

    bash or terminal

    sudo dnf install ncurses-term

    vim or notepad or cat

    set t_ti= t_te=

    Verify your SSH client or local terminal emulator is setting TERM consistently (echo $TERM)