When I try to run 'top' on the Fedora 21 system I am installing I get the error: 'xterm-256color': unknown terminal type
'TERM=xterm top' also fails: 'xterm': unknown terminal type.
and fails the same way no matter what the terminal type is set to. I don't have a TERMIFO_DIRS env variable set nor a ~/.terminfo/ directory. Same thing also happens when I login as a newly created user.
/usr/share/terminfo looks normal and all the files and directories therein are world-readable.
After reading a lot of manpages I came across 'toe' which according to 'man toe' "lists all available terminal types by primary name with descriptions." In my case, 'toe' lists nothing. However, 'toe -as' "-a: report on all of the terminal databases which ncurses would search, rather than only the first one that it finds" says, --> /etc/terminfo ----> /usr/share/terminfo --*-: Eterm Eterm with xterm-style color... --*-: Eterm-256color Eterm with xterm 256-colors --*-: Eterm-88color Eterm with 88 colors --*-: ansi ansi/pc-term compatible with... --*-: aterm AfterStep terminal and continues with list of everything in /usr/share/- terminfo/. I don't know what the "--*-" text means.
I tried replacing /etc/terminfo with a symlink to /usr/share/terminfo but that made no difference.
Anyone have a clue about what is going on here?