erl -remsh doesn't connect to a running node -- solution

[Vlad Skvortsov]

Hi,

for a long time I've been suffering from a weird issue. When connecting 
to our production boxes, e.g.

devbox$ ssh prod
prod$ erl -sname vss$$ -remsh node@REDACTED

(note that the beam is running on the same box)

...I'd then issue something like "registered()." and note that I'm not 
really connected to the production Erlang. It would be just a brand new 
Erlang node. However, when connecting from another box, I'd successfully 
connect to our system.

I was puzzled by that for quite a while and today my colleague pointed 
out that the issue is linked to the TERM setting I'd use. When ssh'ing 
from, say, Solaris to FreeBSD, the terminal setting gets set to 
"xtermc", which is invalid on FreeBSD. Running 'erl' in interactive mode 
with invalid TERM setting screws things up somehow and that's why 'erl' 
doesn't connect to a running beam, but starts a new node instead (yeah, 
without a warning).

I hope this will be of help to someone else.

-- 
Vlad Skvortsov, vss@REDACTED, http://vss.73rus.com