I am currently running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS. Out of nowhere, my 3.6.2 GNOME terminal is returning "terminals database is inaccessible" when the "clear" command is executed. Any suggestions on how I can troubleshoot this problem?
Thanks for the help,
Eric
This can happen a lot with terminal multiplexers (screen, tmux, etc...)
If if you are running one of those, make sure that your TERM is set to screen-256color for the broadest support. I've run into issues in BSD, Linux, Multiple x window managers, etc... from this.
Check for set -g default-terminal screen-256color in ~/.tmux.conf or term screen-256color in ~/.screenrc as TERM is changed by your multiplexer when you load it.
If echo $TERM already says screen-256color try this:
TERM='xterm' clear. If that works, then your terminal emulator doesn't support the standard multiplexer configuration. You might need to add something special for that particular terminal emulator in your bashrc/bash_profile.
Keep in mind that this problem is related to your tool selection and configuration. Ubuntu attempts to choose defaults that work well with other defaults so that everything 'just works'.
Open the hidden ~/.bashrc bash customization file, see if the clear command is being overridden with something else, then comment it with an hash at the start of the line, close the terminal and restart, or type in . ~/.bashrc to refresh the bashrc script immediately.
Also both the commands env and set will give you information about the environment variables of your OS, you can start troubleshooting there.
Either your $TERM variable is not right or your TERMCAP db is corrupted.
This message occurs when your terminal type cannot be matched in the TERMCAP database.
the termcap database on ubuntu 16.04 is in /lib/terminfo , not sure if its the same on 14.04 , there must be an file in that tree of the same name as the value in your $TERM.
the ncurses-base package manages this , check if its installed.
