Skip to main content

bash - PuTTY not sending Esc


I SSH with PuTTY from my Win7 x64 laptop to a Unix environment for my office. The problem I'm facing is very similar to this post where I cannot send an Esc character to the terminal. I first noticed it when trying to exit insert mode in vi, but based on the troubleshooting within that post that I've done it seems that hitting the Esc key just isn't doing anything at all.


So first off, let me restate the problem. Logged into PuTTY, vi a file, go into insert mode, can't come out without hitting F1 and then :q (to quit the help), then I can save and quit the document.


The first troubleshooting step in the other question states to try this:


 python -c "print ord(raw_input('char '))"

Then the result should be 27. Running this, I'm told I have an empty string (similar to one of the comments, but this user never comes back).


Then I tried the next thing in the comment...but to be honest I had no clue what I was looking for. Command and my results are given:



# bind -p | grep -i '\\e' | less

"\e\C-g": abort
"\eOD": backward-char
"\e[D": backward-char
"\e\C-h": backward-kill-word
"\e\C-?": backward-kill-word
"\e[1;5D": backward-word
"\e[5D": backward-word
"\eb": backward-word
"\e": end-of-history
"\e[6~": end-of-history
"\eOF": end-of-line
"\e[4~": end-of-line
"\e[8~": end-of-line
"\e[F": end-of-line
"\eOC": forward-char
"\e[C": forward-char
"\e[1;5C": forward-word
"\e[5C": forward-word
"\ef": forward-word
"\eg": glob-complete-word
"\e^": history-expand-line
"\e#": insert-comment
"\e*": insert-completions
"\e.": insert-last-argument
"\e_": insert-last-argument
"\ed": kill-word
"\eOB": next-history
"\e[B": next-history
"\en": non-incremental-forward-search-history
"\ep": non-incremental-reverse-search-history
"\e=": possible-completions
"\e?": possible-completions
"\eOA": previous-history
"\e[A": previous-history
"\e[2~": quoted-insert
"\e\C-r": revert-line
"\er": revert-line
"\e ": set-mark
"\e\C-e": shell-expand-line
"\e&": tilde-expand
"\et": transpose-words
"\eu": upcase-word
"\e.": yank-last-arg
"\e_": yank-last-arg
"\e\C-y": yank-nth-arg
"\ey": yank-pop

Using the Ctrl+V then hitting Esc does nothing until I hit Enter, which then displays ^M (I believe this is the carriage return (CR) character that I get from quoting the Enter key). Typing Ctrl+[ will let me exit vi, so I'm assuming that's the correct character I'm looking for, I just don't know why my terminal seems to think Esc is not bound or is bound to some random character.


My current settings for the keyboard/terminal function keys and keyboard are set to "Esc[n~". I've tried changing them to "Linux" and "Xterm R6", but this doesn't seem to change anything.


I've recently had to add a tunnel for another application to work, and changed the setting under Terminal > Features > Disable application keypad mode set to true. I've since reverted to this being false, but that does seem to resolve my problem either.


My assumption is in saving my profile after these changes I accidentally changed something else that is now saved, but reverting to the default settings and logging into my server does not resolve the issue either.


I have no ~/.vimrc and no changes were made to the server according to management so I'm guess I did something.


My question at this point is: What else can I check in PuTTY or try changing that will alter the behavior of how a key is being passed to the prompt? Is it possible to just create a .vimrc to force this to work? What else can I do to make this work?


I'm a new user to these forums so if I made a mistake in laying this out please let me know, but any help in troubleshooting my issue or helping to point me in the right direction would be lovely.



Answer



...so again getting frustrated with vi numpad not working, I changed the "Disable application keypad mode" as mentioned in my original question back to "True/checked". This not only allowed me to use my numpad in vi again, but seems to have repaired my Esc issue as well.


The only think I can add is that it seems my machine also had a java error of some kind that seemed to mess up Windows updates that was fixed by one of our IT Techs. Perhaps the two unknowingly correlated?? At any rate, I am closing the question.


Perhaps I didn't save my profile correctly? I'm pretty sure I double-checked this, but I'm also struggling with the idea this "magically fixed itself".


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

How do I transmit a single hexadecimal value serial data in PuTTY using an Alt code?

I am trying to sent a specific hexadecimal value across a serial COM port using PuTTY. Specifically, I want to send the hex codes 9C, B6, FC, and 8B. I have looked up the Alt codes for these and they are 156, 182, 252, and 139 respectively. However, whenever I input the Alt codes, a preceding hex value of C2 is sent before 9C, B6, and 8B so the values that are sent are C2 9C, C2 B6, and C2 8B. The value for FC is changed to C3 FC. Why are these values being placed before the hex value and why is FC being changed altogether? To me, it seems like there is a problem internally converting the Alt code to hex. Is there a way to directly input hex values without using Alt codes in PuTTY? Answer What you're seeing is just ordinary text character set conversion. As far as PuTTY is concerned, you are typing (and reading) text , not raw binary data, therefore it has to convert the text to bytes in whatever configured character set before sending it over the wire. In other words, when y...
Post a Comment
Read more

linux - Extract/save a mail attachment using bash

Using normal bash tools (ie, built-ins or commonly-available command-line tools), is it possible, and how to extract/save attachments on emails? For example, say I have a nightly report which arrives via email but is a zip archive of several log files. I want to save all those zips into a backup directory. How would I accomplish that? Answer If you're aiming for portability, beware that there are several different versions of mail(1) and mailx(1) . There's a POSIX mailx command, but with very few requirements. And none of the implementations I have seem to parse attachments anyway. You might have the mpack package . Its munpack command saves all parts of a MIME message into separate files, then all you have to do is save the interesting parts and clean up the rest. There's also metamail . An equivalent of munpack is metamail -wy .
Post a Comment
Read more

ubuntu - Why does my USB hdd returns SG_IO: bad/missing sense data?

I am able to boot and run commands from external USB hdd; the message in question appears for about 45 seconds then booting continues. GRUB2 is installed on internal HDD. When choosing to boot directly to /dev/sdb the message doesn't appear, however boot time is about the same as booting to internal HDD. /dev/sdb: Timing cached reads: 1018 MB in 2.00 seconds = 508.97 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 80 MB in 3.03 seconds = 26.37 MB/sec pfeiffep@de:~$ sudo hdparm -i /dev/sdb /dev/sdb: SG_IO: bad/missing sense data, sb[]: 70 00 05 00 00 00 00 10 00 00 00 00 20 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 HDIO_GET_IDENTITY failed: Invalid argument Gparted correctly identifies the drive as SAMSUNG MP0402H. Any ideas how to remedy the HDIO & SG_IO messages?
Post a Comment
Read more

Desktop reboots itself on sleep or hibernate

I have been using an ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard for main home desktop workstation, operating Windows Vista x64. This computer has right from day one not been able to enter hibernate or standby; after Windows performs its final actions and brings the machine down, it would automatically revive itself for a reboot. Updating to the second latest BIOS (1201)has not helped (the latest BIOS revision would induce video refresh problems rendering it unusable). I have been reading related discussions on incidents similar to mine to no avail of a true workable solution. They appear to be more speculative guesses rather than actual knowledge on the inner workings of motherboard hardware. Does anybody have any electronic engineering experience on PC energy-saving standards to provide a more informed opinion how to go about getting this to work? More stories: this motherboard could not even reboot properly the first thing i used it. It was due to refresh rate of the onboard GPU, which had no influe...
Post a Comment
Read more