Re: Vi backspace key problem

[Dag Wieers <dag wieers com>]

On Wed, 20 Jul 2005, Tim Edwards wrote:

> Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
> > Quoting John Haxby <jch scalix com>:
> > 
> > Yup, this is usually due to somebody being too helpful, knowing too little,
> > or
> > both.  The erase character will usually be set to correct value (based on
> > termcap, terminfo, or serial line settings), and if you are using ssh to
> > connect to remote machine, this setting will be transfered too.
> 
> Yeah that was it, thanks. There was the following in /etc/bashrc:
> 
> if [ -x /usr/bin/tput ]; then
>       if [ "x`tput kbs`" != "x" ]; then # We can't do this with "dumb"
> terminal
>         stty erase `tput kbs`
>       elif [ -x /usr/bin/wc ]; then
>         if [ "`tput kbs|wc -c `" -gt 0 ]; then # We can't do this with "dumb"
> terminal
>           stty erase `tput kbs`
>         fi
>       fi
>     fi
> 
> When it was commented out and I re-logged in the erase value shown by stty
> -all had changed from ^H to ^? and the backspace worked correctly! :)
> 
> For some reason on our RHEL3 boxes the erase value is ^H and backspace works
> correctly, but on RHEL4 when it was that it was broken.

That's why it is important to replace as few config-files as possible. If 
a config-file (like /etc/bashrc) has not been touched, an upgrade will 
replace the file with the new default.

Whatever you have put in /etc/bashrc yourself could have gone into 
/etc/profile.d/

In some cases this is not possible, but it is always better to first look 
at your options and weigh them, before changing a config-file. Otherwise 
you have to clean up the .rpmsave and .rpmnew files yourself.

PS I've once written a tool in bash to help in cleaning up leftover files 
like .rpmnew, .rpmsave and .rpmorig and I desperately need to rewrite that 
in python (allowing to diff available files, verifying with rpmdb and 
being smart about it in general :))

Kind regards,
--   dag wieers,  dag wieers com,  http://dag.wieers.com/   --
[all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]