[Iterm-discuss] getting iTerm and Red Hat to get along

[Syd B. <Syd...@Br...>]

[If this is not the right environment for this post, please let me
 know.]

I have been using iTerm for many months now, and am overall quite
happy with it.[1] I most often use it to ssh to one of a few Debian
GNU/Linux, Ubuntu GNU/Linux, or Mac OS X systems. I have no trouble
with any of these. I also occasionally ssh to a Sun Solaris system,
and have only minor problems there about which I don't care.

However, my job now requires that I do significant work on two
different, but theoretically identically configured, Red Hat
systems. I am not the sysadmin of these systems, and getting changes
made to them can be difficult, if possible at all.

When I ssh into the Red Hat systems from an iTerm session, I find
that my ALT key does not function as META. (I am testing this within
GNU Emacs on the target Red Hat system.) Depending on how I set the
iTerm terminal and keyboard profile and the TERM environment variable
on the Red Hat system (I have tried almost every combination, I
think), I am able to make things worse (e.g., colors fail or cursor
keys don't work), but not better.

My ALT-as-META works just fine when I ssh into the Red Hat system
from Apple's Terminal application. The settings that seem like they
may affect this are set as follows:

* preferences
  - Declare terminal type ($TERM) as [xterm-color]
* terminal/keyboard
  - Delete key sends backspace [NOT checked]
  - Use option key as meta [checked]
* terminal/emulation
  - Escape non-ASCII characters [checked]
  - Option click to position cursor [NOT checked]
  - Paste newlines as carriage returns [checked]
  - Strict VT-100 keypad behavior [NOT checked]
  - Reverse linewrap [checked]

So, how do I set my profiles such that iTerm will behave the same way
Terminal does? I figure I could use that as a starting point, at
least.

Any help appreciated. While I'm not at all new to Linux, Emacs, etc.,
and I have no fear of a command-line, I'm not capable of messing with
/etc/termcap, using stty or tset, or other low-level stuff on my own.

Note
----
[1] I have one relatively minor font-face quibble with the 0.9
    release, but I will ask about that some other day.