How to fix xterm-ghostty: unknown terminal type¶
The problem¶
You SSH from a Ghostty terminal into a fresh server and see:
Anything that relies on terminfo — clear, less, vim, top, tmux — misbehaves. Cause: your local TERM=xterm-ghostty, but the remote host has no terminfo entry for it (Ghostty is newer than the remote's ncurses database).
The fix: copy the terminfo to the remote¶
Your local machine already has the xterm-ghostty terminfo. Export it and pipe it into the remote's tic compiler — it installs into the remote user's ~/.terminfo, no root needed:
Reconnect and the error is gone. A harmless warning like "older tic versions may treat the description field as an alias" is fine — it still installs.
Quick one-off workaround¶
If you just need the current session to behave and don't want to install anything:
Ghostty is compatible enough with xterm-256color for most things; the terminfo copy above is the proper, permanent fix.