Can't find a valid termcap file at /root/nzbperl.pl line 39

[ak4life]

Hello,

Nzbperl runs great on my Ubuntu 7.10 laptop, but on Debian Etch I get:

# ~/nzbperl.pl --help
Can't find a valid termcap file at /root/nzbperl.pl line 39

I'm connecting to the Debian box via SSH. I tried the suggestions in
this post: http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=466983,
but my ncurses-bin is at the latest level yet I still can't run
"infocmp -C".

Any ideas how I could run nzbpearl over a SSH session?

thanks much in advance, -Alain.

[ak4life]

According to http://www.debian.org/doc/FAQ/ch-compat.en.html:

-----------begin quote-----------
4.8 Why can't I compile programs that require libtermcap?

Debian uses the terminfo database and the ncurses library of terminal
interface routes, rather than the termcap database and the termcap
library. Users who are compiling programs that require some knowledge
of the terminal interface should replace references to libtermcap with
references to libncurses.

To support binaries that have already been linked with the termcap
library, and for which you do not have the source, Debian provides a
package called termcap-compat. This provides both libtermcap.so.2 and /
etc/termcap. Install this package if the program fails to run with the
error message "can't load library 'libtermcap.so.2'", or complains
about a missing /etc/termcap file.
-----------end quote-----------

However, current official Debian Etch repositories don't seem to
contain the termcap-compat package. Searching unofficial repositories
via http://www.apt-get.org/ didn't produce any results for termcap-
compat either. :(

-Alain.

[Jason Plumb]

> However, current official Debian Etch repositories don't seem to
> contain the termcap-compat package. Searching unofficial repositories
> via http://www.apt-get.org/ didn't produce any results for termcap-
> compat either. :(

Well, I wrote nzbperl using Debian unstable, which is a bit further out
than Etch, but it shouldn't be a big deal. I do have a
/usr/lib/libtermcap.a but no compat package installed. Hmmm.

$ apt-file search /usr/lib/libtermcap.so
libncurses5-dev: usr/lib/libtermcap.so

Can you try installing libncurses dev package and see if that helps?

Thanks,

-jason
http://noisybox.net

[ak4life]

Hello Jason,

Attempted to install libncurses dev package with:

# apt-get install libncurses5-dev

..but apt complained about unmet dependencies and broken packages. I
gave up and tried nzbperl in Debian testing (Lenny) instead. Works
great!

thanks much and best regards, -Alain.

[Jason Plumb]

Cool, glad that you got it working....but it seems odd that Debian
stable would have *any* unmet deps in the real repos...but I guess
stranger things could happen.

Cheers,

-jason

[Matthew Stewart]

Not sure what the missing lib is all about, but I have a Kubuntu7.10
install with no probs running nzbperl "out of the box". Kubuntu vs Ubuntu?

Matt