Error opening terminal: unknown when executing nano

Question

I have nano installed on a CentOS 7 VPS. When trying to open a file using nano, such as sudo nano /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf, i get Error opening terminal: unknown. I am using Termius to access my VPS using SSH

Answer 1

Looks like you need to set the TERM environment variable. That tells nano how to run within the Termius environment i.e. it encodes what capabilities Termius has.

export TERM="xterm"

Should work for you, although you could also try export TERM="xterm-256color" or experiment with other values from terminfo.

Add this line to ~/.profile (you might have to create that file) if you want to avoid having to run it every time you log in and want to use nano.