FreeBSD, legacy termcap, rxvt, screen, 256 colors and so on

If you are reading this it's likely that you already feel the pain that's caused by the combination of the programs i mentioned in the title.

Having them play together nicely especially over a ssh connection from another box can be really annoying. I spent quite some time to figure out a nice working setup which isn't too hackish (like setting TERM=xterm-color or so..)

I write a howto over at forums.freebsd.org so have a look there too. Here is the short version.

You will need a $HOME/.termcap file containing this:

rxvt-256color|rxvt-256color terminal (X Window System):
  :tc=rxvt-unicode:
  :tc=rxvt:

In your shell rc file (e.g. .bashrc) add something like this for screen:

if [ -f ${HOME}/.termcap ]; then
  TERMCAP=$(< ${HOME}/.termcap)
  export TERMCAP
fi

Finally tell screen what to do in your .screenrc file (all in one line):

termcapinfo xterm-color|xterm-16color|xterm-88color|xterm-256color|rxvt*
'Co#256:AB=\E[48;5;%dm:AF=\E[38;5;%dm'

Still doesn't work? Don't blame me. :)
(Check if your programs were compiled properly with 256 color support)