Can open termcap database file :)

So, after some struggling, I've decided that, for this assignment, it would probably be more productive for me to try and compile and install emacs as a user in my lab account rather than endure with vi. Compilation went much more smoothly than it had with synergy the other day, except that, afterward, when I tried to run it, I would get the following error:

emacs: "Cannot open termcap database file"

And the process would exit. That wasn't nice. I tried googling the matter, and couldn't find any solution in the first few pages. Well, there were solutions, just not ones I could use. A lot of them recommended installing libncurses or a compatibility library, neither of which I have the rights to do. It eventually dawned on me to read the the termcap manual, discovered the environment variable TERMCAP and, after a `locate`, found an example TERMCAP database file on my system for xterm. Copy, set variable, run emacs. Success!

I hope this helps someone at some point. I should really post this as a reply to others with the same issue. "If it can't find the database, tell it where one is!" Ah well, maybe during the weekend :)