Hacktopia

So you just logged into your unix system and you started typing and then oops you typed a wrong letter I mean charater.

root@server# ssfdkjfkjf^?^?^?^?

What are those funky charaters at the end, yup they are me trying to use the back space, but I just end up getting further away from the charaters that I am tryign to delete.

So now for the majick solution.

root@server# stty erase ^?

so the command stty sets options for the terminal session. Then you are telling it what key you want to use to erase with. Which is what the ^? is the erase key being used, so type stty erase space key then back space key then Enter, and you should be back to sanity once again.

So you go to use crontab -e and you get some strange stuff at the bottom of the line.  Yup you are in ee, which is even older then vi.  This can often happen when you are using a serial connection, and even when using ssh.  This is a simple fix, with examples below.

TERM=vt100 ; export TERM ; EDITOR=vi;export EDITOR

user@server:~$ echo $TERM
xterm
user@server:~$ TERM=vt100 ; export TERM ; EDITOR=vi;export EDITOR
user@server:~$ echo $TERM
vt100