Using Terminal

A terminal emulator displays a window that enables you to enter operating system commands, use UNIX commands, and copy and paste text.

• Default Desktop Terminal Emulator

• Using a Terminal Window

• Running dtterm on Another System

• Customizing dtterm

• dtterm Global Options

• dtterm Terminal Options

• Terminal Control Characters

• Changing the Default Terminal Emulator

Note - Illustrations shown in this chapter were taken from the default CDE screens. Your screens may be different from the illustrations if you or your system administrator have customized them.

Default Desktop Terminal Emulator

The default terminal emulator on the desktop is dtterm. The dtterm terminal emulator emulates that portion of the VT220 terminal that is consistent with ANSI and ISO standards.

The dtterm command-line prompt is a special character that is displayed in the left margin of your terminal emulator. It can be a ``%'', ``<`', ``$'', or another special character. A small box or bar, called a cursor, shows where characters will appear in the window when you type something on the keyboard.

Starting a Terminal Window

There are several ways you can start a Terminal window:

• From the Front Panel

• From Application Manager

• From File Manager

• From the Window Menu of Another Terminal

• From Address Manager with a host selected

To Start a Terminal Window from the Front Panel

• Select the This Host control on the Hosts subpanel.

  

1. Or, click the activity indicator (globe) control on the workspace switch.

   The Go dialog box is displayed.

2. Type an IP address such as 129.156.120.179 or the @ symbol followed by a hostname (for example, @jupiter) for the host on which you want to run the terminal session.

3. Click OK.

To Start a Terminal Window from Application Manager

1. Click the Desktop_Apps control on the Front Panel.

2. Double-click the Terminal icon (you may have to scroll down to see it).

   

To Start a Terminal Window from File Manager

1. Click the File Manager control on the Front Panel.

   

   The File Manager window appears.

2. Choose Open Terminal from the File Manager File menu.

   

To Start a Terminal Window from the Window Menu of Another Terminal

• Choose New from the Window menu of an existing Terminal window.

An exact replica of the Terminal window appears.

To Start a Terminal Window from Address Manager with a host selected

• With the IP address of the required host displayed in the scrolling pane of Address Manager, choose Terminal from the Actions menu.

To Close a Terminal Window

• Type exit at the command line and press Return.

• Or, choose Exit from the Terminal Window menu.

• Or, choose Close from the Window menu (displayed through the button at the upper left of the window frame).

Note - Typing exit at the command line is the preferred method of closing a Terminal window. The other two methods don't terminate any background processes you may have started, which can sometimes cause problems.

If you started the Terminal window from a command line, you can stop it by pressing Control+C in the window from which you started it.