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Big-C · May 28, 2002, 05:23 PM

Hi,

I am telnetting from my OS X system (10.1.4) to various Solaris machines running Solaris 8. Backspace works fine until I vi a file; then, my backspace character is "^?".

I figured that manually setting my backspace char to ^h would work, but fails when I enter the editor...

I'm not sure how to solve this problem. Searches covered the terminal app in OS X, but not the problem I'm seeing.

Any help is appreciated. I'm getting tired of ^u & retyping my entire line!!

-Chris

pat++ · May 28, 2002, 05:33 PM

Not sure if this would help, but did you try to enable strict VT100 emulation in Terminal's prefs ?

miligo · May 28, 2002, 06:03 PM

you could always just do a

> stty erase ^? (just hit backspace)

that will set your terminal to use that key as erase. vi must be resetting your terminal settings to what it wants, leaving you hosed in the shell. I would look for a vi setting to control that behavior, and look in any rc files in your home directory that may be doing this.

Big-C · May 28, 2002, 06:55 PM

Thanks for the suggestions.

stty erase ^? doesn't seem to carry into vi; I even tried putting that command in the .exrc but no luck. The best I can hope for is manually typing ctrl-h, which as you can imagine is a pain.

I also tried using strict vt100, but still no luck.

Oh well, thanks anyway! If I find anything useful in the man pages, I'll post here in case someone else has this problem.

-Chris

Detrius · May 28, 2002, 08:42 PM

I have the same problem. My problem only occurs when I log in from X Windows. In this case, simply launching tcsh on the Solaris box after logging in fixes the problem. I don't have an explanation for why it happens or why this fixes it.

johann · May 29, 2002, 01:33 AM

sorry to just post trash..
but i hate solaris
i call it slowaris clownix

Arkham_c · May 29, 2002, 09:08 AM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by johann:
sorry to just post trash..
but i hate solaris
i call it slowaris clownix<hr /></blockquote>It's not just Solaris. AIX has the same problem. Apple should really fix their terminal emulation to pass the correct control sequences.

I have the stty command in by .cshrc on the remote host, but that's not a complete solution.

Big-C · May 29, 2002, 11:55 AM

Well, the only way I can find it to fix it by not using the tcsh on my solaris machine.

Using csh is roughly the same functionality, and it maintains the "stty erase ^?" setting through to vi.

Even so, it doesn't erase the characters that are backspaced through until you leave 'insert' mode or type over them, but it's the best I can come up with for now...

miligo · May 29, 2002, 04:15 PM

<blockquote>quote:<hr />Originally posted by Big-C:

Even so, it doesn't erase the characters that are backspaced through until you leave 'insert' mode or type over them, but it's the best I can come up with for now...<hr /></blockquote>that is expected behaviour in vi, all flavors if my memory isn't completely shot.

kangoo_boo · May 30, 2002, 02:49 PM

tcsh default completion is control D
zsh is the "best" shell
bash is for "scripts" but actually quite easy to use and soon may be better than zsh for my tastes

(don't need to do leet scripts ala zsh anyway we still have perl heh)
then
apple terminal does pass correct "control sequences" it is just not recognised yet by most systems as it is new (like Eterm few times ago and even now)
to correct this tell your shell environment that you are for example vt220 compatible:
Bourne Shells:
export TERM=vt220
C Shells:
setenv TERM vt220

now u r a little more leet

jasong · May 30, 2002, 08:11 PM

I have the same problem with Telneting into my IRIX Webserver. I need to type "stty dec" everytime I log in.

-- Jason

theolein · Jun 1, 2002, 06:00 PM

Good info Kangoo_boo.

Are you people really using telnet? And this for a remote host. This is asking for someone to sniff your passwords. I really would use SSH if I were you. I've had the same problem on various linux boxes with the backspace key in vi. What I did was simply to exit insert mode quickly by hitting the escape key, moving to the character before what Iwanted to delete and hitting "x" until everything I need to delete is deleted. Then I hit the "i" to get back into insert mode and I'm off again. Pain in the backside really, but I got used to it.

unixguy · Jun 5, 2002, 04:25 PM

Backspace? -I couldn't find it on any of my Mac keyboards. The default settings in Solaris 8 all function properly with settings for TERM=vt100 and stty erase ^?(the "delete" key) using the bourne shell (/usr/bin/sh). Also my terminal.app setting on the mac are all default settings. Setting TERM to anything other than 'xterm', 'vt100', or 'ansi' wont do much for you and may introduce other problems since most emulators are shoddy about implementing the basic 'vt' or 'ansi' definitions. Also check to see if you have a ".exrc" file in your home directory or working directory or if you have EXINIT set in your environment. These could change your term or ttytype when vi starts up.