Bug 107235 – ncurses on new/clean ppc install has blacked out borders

• Product: Gentoo Linux
• Status: RESOLVED FIXED

[Description Jason Beaudoin 2005-09-25 21:10:10 UTC]

System: 2005.1 for ppc, ibook g3 500mhz, ati radeon R128, 2.6.12-r4, gcc
3.4.4-r1, Ncurses-5.4-r6

Problem: Ncurses based applications are not rendered correctly. The single pixel
border is not displayed around each window, instead the character block is left
black. The problem is only encountered from within the console; everything is
fine when using an xterm to run ufed, menuconfig, or another ncurses app.

Reproducible: Always
Steps to Reproduce:
1. Log in and stay in the console
2. Run either ufed or menuconfig from the console

Actual Results:  
The character blocks that "house" the single pixel border around each window are
black instead of blue with the white, single pixel, border. The application is
still functional, but does not look right.

Expected Results:  
There should be a white border.

cobalt jason # emerge info
Portage 2.0.51.22-r2 (default-linux/ppc/2005.1/ppc/G3, gcc-3.4.4,
glibc-2.3.4.20041102-r1, 2.6.12-gentoo-r6 ppc)
=================================================================
System uname: 2.6.12-gentoo-r6 ppc 750CXe
Gentoo Base System version 1.6.13
dev-lang/python:     2.3.5-r2
sys-apps/sandbox:    1.2.12
sys-devel/autoconf:  2.13, 2.59-r6
sys-devel/automake:  1.4_p6, 1.5, 1.6.3, 1.7.9-r1, 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6
sys-devel/binutils:  2.15.90.0.3-r5
sys-devel/libtool:   1.5.18-r1
virtual/os-headers:  2.6.11-r2
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="ppc"
AUTOCLEAN="yes"
CBUILD="powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=750 -mtune=powerpc -pipe -fno-strict-aliasing -mpowerpc-gfxopt"
CHOST="powerpc-unknown-linux-gnu"
CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config
/usr/share/config /var/qmail/control"
CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d"
CXXFLAGS="-O2 -mcpu=750 -mtune=powerpc -pipe -fno-strict-aliasing -mpowerpc-gfxopt"
DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles"
FEATURES="autoconfig distlocks sandbox sfperms strict"
GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org
http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo"
PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages"
PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp"
PORTDIR="/usr/portage"
SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage"
USE="ppc alsa berkdb bitmap-fonts crypt cups doc eds fbcon fortran ftp gif gpm
gstreamer gtk gtk2 ipv6 jabber jpeg libwww lm-sensors motif mp3 mpeg ncurses nls
offensive ogg oggvorbis opengl pam pdflib perl png pnp python readline slang
spell ssl symlink tcpd tidy truetype truetype-fonts type1-fonts unicode usb
vorbis xml2 xv zlib userland_GNU kernel_linux elibc_glibc"
Unset:  ASFLAGS, CTARGET, LANG, LC_ALL, LDFLAGS, LINGUAS, MAKEOPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY

[Comment 1 Joe Jezak (RETIRED) 2005-09-26 13:50:40 UTC]

It looks like extended ASCII characters with use="unicode" break on PPC. 
Building ncurses with -unicode seems to fix the problem with ncurses-5.4-r6. 
ncurses-5.4-r5 doesn't seem to exhibit this behaviour. 

Reproduced here on my PegII with a RadeonFB.

[Comment 2 SpanKY 2005-09-26 15:01:35 UTC]

did you emerge dialog with USE=unicode ?

[Comment 3 Joe Jezak (RETIRED) 2005-10-02 11:51:35 UTC]

Dialog's unicode flag was set the same as ncurses.  Compiling dialog without the
unicode flag, but ncurses with, results in no change.

[Comment 4 Thomas Dickey 2005-11-13 16:04:00 UTC]

I don't see the $TERM value.  Since Linux console doesn't
use vt100-compatible line-drawing in UTF-8 mode, ncurses
looks at $TERM and the locale settings to decide if it has
to work around this.  Also (see man ncurses), $NCURSES_NO_UTF8_ACS
can be set to do the same thing.

[Comment 5 Joe Jezak (RETIRED) 2005-11-13 20:06:29 UTC]

TERM is set to linux

[Comment 6 Michael Zanetta 2005-12-09 07:01:58 UTC]

Hi there,

I ran into the same problem on a x86 host.
I recompiled all stuff and ncurses apps where still acting weird.

I had to set the UNICODE="no" in rc.conf to fix it.

HTH,

Michael

[Comment 7 Vlastimil Babka (Caster) (RETIRED) 2006-05-31 05:24:14 UTC]

Happens here too on x86 with unicode. After unmasking and merging ncurses-5.5-r2 it seems ok.

[Comment 8 Ari Entlich 2006-05-31 18:31:13 UTC]

Another way to fix this is to make a '/etc/env.d/02locale' file as described at http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/utf-8.xml. This will make ncurses use the plus, dash, and pipe characters to draw window borders, but it's better than the screen being totally corrupt. Trying to use alsamixer without the border characters working is almost impossible.

[Comment 9 Vlastimil Babka (Caster) (RETIRED) 2006-06-05 09:42:37 UTC]

(In reply to comment #8)

I have 02locale set to utf8 locales. 5.4-r6 is broken anyways. 5.5-r2 uses the plus, dash, and pipe characters as you say (in framebuffer console). Both versions use single pixel borders in X console (Konsole).

[Comment 10 SpanKY 2006-06-11 07:57:36 UTC]

ok ... solution: use 5.5-r2

i'll see about getting it stabilized