error: unable to open TUI reason: the TERM environment variable is set to an unknown value: alacritty

[Drew-Daniels]

Thanks so much for making this! I used this for the first time today on MacOS with iTerm2 and it was amazing for what I was working on.

I just noticed what is an issue when using lnav within an alacritty terminal (on Debian bookworm, but I assume it happens on any OS using alacritty), where it looks like lnav is refusing to open because it doesn't recognize alacritty as a valid TERM value.

lnav version v0.12.4

Describe the bug I'm not able to use lnav to view a log file, while using alacritty

To Reproduce

• On Debian Bookworm, install lnav using snap: sudo snap install lnav
• Follow the instructions listed in alacritty docs to build alacritty from the source
• Open an alacritty terminal
• Try to open a log file, lnav config.log
• See that you get an error message

❯ lnav config.log
✘ error: unable to open TUI
 reason: the TERM environment variable is set to an unknown value: alacritty

[tstack]

You might be able to workaround by setting TERM to xterm-256color.

Sounds like the alacritty terminfo file is missing. Not sure if it's an issue with the snap build or something else.

[Drew-Daniels]

Thanks @tstack - Just wanted to confirm I was able to open lnav after setting TERM to xterm-256color like you suggested

[gigaimage]

I am seeing same error. It was working fine but started seeing this error since a day ago.

 λ lnav
✘ error: unable to open TUI
 reason: unable to initialize notcurses Unknown error: 316
 = help: The TERM value of “xterm-256color” is not known.  Check for your terminal in https://github.com/dankamongmen/notcurses/blob/master/TERMINALS.md or use “xterm-256color”

MacOS Monterey 12.7.6 Terminal: Warp v0.2025.03.12.08.02.stable_03 lnav: Homebrewed version lnav 0.12.4

:/> env | grep -E 'term|COLORTERM'

Output:

COLORTERM=truecolor
TERM=xterm-256color

lnav works fine on iTerm2 and Mac Terminal.app.

I've posted this issue on Warp GH. Searching here found similar issue has been filed already.

Thank you.

[tstack]

@gigaimage I was able to replicate this and it seems like the DA1 response from the terminal might've changed and it was not recognized by lnav.

[AndydeCleyre]

I'm experiencing the same problem with Rio terminal and tmux, with COLORTERM=truecolor and TERM=tmux-256color (and other combinations I've tried), on Linux.

[tstack]

@AndydeCleyre

I'm experiencing the same problem with Rio terminal

Can you try a recent beta release to see if the problem persists -- https://github.com/tstack/lnav/releases/tag/v0.13.0-beta4

[AndydeCleyre]

@tstack Yes, thank you, the beta indeed does not have the problem.

[gigaimage]

@tstack : tested 0.13 beta4 Warp term (v0.2025.04.23.08.11.stable_01). It's working now. Thank you!

[tstack]

Sounds like things are working better now, going to close. Open a new issue if the latest releases are problematic.