Hello all.
just fyi, I ran across this error message while using rsnapshot/ssh
between a couple boxes. /etc/bashrc uses setterm to disable the
terminal bell (setterm -blength 0) however the ssh session sets the
TERM environment variable to "dumb", which setterm knows nothing about
(apparently). Adding the if statement around my setterm commands
fixes the "$TERM is not defined" error message.

# ssh sets TERM to dumb when using scp or other...
if [ "$TERM" != "dumb" ]; then
setterm -blength 0
setterm -bfreq 0
fi