Ubuntu – Getting wmctrl to work with multiple Emacs windows

I think you want to determine if a command is run in a terminal.

if [ -t 2 ]; then
  # Standard error is a terminal
  emacs -nw "$@"
elif [ -n "$DISPLAY" ]; then
  # An X display is available
  xterm -e emacs -nw "$@"
else
  # We have nothing
  emacs --daemon "$@"
fi

If you want this to always happen when you run Emacs, put it in a script and invoke that script instead. You can call the script /usr/local/bin/emacs (assuming Linux) if you want it to be called emacs and invoked in preference to the “real” emacs executable in /usr/bin.

Note that to edit files as root, you should use sudoedit (benefits: the editor runs as you so you get all your settings; the edited file is put into place atomically when you finish editing, reducing the chance of a mishap). You can also edit files as root directly inside Emacs by opening /sudo::/path/to/file.

I worked out an approach that lets you find out specifically what terminals are available on the remote host and then set it. Usually, there is at least one ansi compatible terminal, so a 'hack' to fake it should be unnecessary.

Done in one long'ish ssh command, it will look something like this:

ssh -i ~/.ssh/some_key.pub -tty some_remote_server "export TERM=`ls -1R /usr/share/terminfo | grep ^eterm-color$ || ls -1R /usr/share/terminfo | grep ^aterm$ || ls -1R /usr/share/terminfo | grep ^ansi$ || ls -1R /usr/share/terminfo | grep ^xterm-256color$ || export TERM=xterm && emacs -nw"

This finds different ansi compatible (and non-compatible) terminal types in an order of preference on the remote host and sets the first one found before launching EMACS. It sets TERM to use 'xterm' type if none of our preferred types are found, ensuring EMACS does actually launch.

In this example, I am looking for eterm-color, aterm, ansi, and xterm-256color in that order. I am not a heavy EMACS user, so not sure those are actually the best. I tested this launch on CentOS and worked well (it found eterm-color in my testing).

I believe the terminfo is in the same place on most/all Linux variants, but you can add more paths to search the same way you would add more terminals, by adding more

 || ls -1R /a/different/path | grep ^someotherterminal$