For some reason or other, the "xterm" on recent Linux
versions is not completely backwards compatible with
ordinaryxterms of common commercial Unixen. Try setting
your TERM variable to "xterm-r5" or maybe even "xterm-old";
that has worked for me. Eventually, I ended up renaming
the terminfo file for "xterm-r5" to plain "xterm", and I
don't seem to be missing any fancy features on that account