Vexing cross-platform issue

[Steven Hirsch]

I need to periodically detach and reattach persistent screen sessions on a box 
running AIX 5.3.  The client is always a Linux machine.  During the initial 
session, everything works smoothly and terminal control sequences are 
processed correctly.  After working for a bit, I detach and leave screen in 
the background.

Periodically, a cron job on the machine cleans up /tmp and removes the socket 
for the screen session.  When this occurs, I send it a SIGCHD to recreate it. 
 However after reattaching I find that screen control sequences and editing 
commands like Backspace are either ignored or completely scrambled!  Resetting 
the usual suspect, LANG, TERM, etc. do not help.

Examples:

$ clear  // totally ignored

The keyboard 'backspace' key appears to generate a LF character.

I cannot find anything obvious in the documentation that pertains to scrambled 
key interpretation under this circumstance.

Any ideas what's going bad?  I've never encountered this with screen sessions 
on Linux hosts.

Steve