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I'm using a linode VPS and I just cloned one of my servers to my development server as I've done many times before.

As usual SSH is inaccessible until /etc/network/interfaces is correctly updated. I log into the linode lish shell via ssh AND the web based ajax console.

I try to modify the interfaces file but the cursor positions appear to be wrong. I'll start modifying a line and the contents of another line will suddenly appear. Save and open the file and it turns out I wasn't even writing on that line! Or the line I just wrote isn't even visible until I try typing some text.

The buggy behavior is consistent across nano and vim.

I'll be contacting support but they are not always going to be around in an emergency. Any ideas here?

What's going on? Where should I look to debug this? I'm just glad this is not a production environment problem. My interfaces file is foobared and I can't even comment out the right lines.

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Yuji Tomita
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1 Answers1

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Try these generic ideas:

  • Ctrl+L to refresh screen
  • reset to reset the terminal to its default state
  • export TERM=xterm to test if the above ideas don't work
weeheavy
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  • Thanks weeheavy - Ctrl + L did seem to clear up the troubles rendering. For example the nano bottom bar would not stick to the bottom - Ctrl+L fixed that! It seems to have fixed itself by morning.. Since it appeared on both the ajax console and my terminal and across reboots, I can only guess it was a problem on the lish screen and not my VPS or local terminal setup issues. What do you think? – Yuji Tomita Nov 04 '11 at 20:12
  • @YujiTomita: don't rule out environment variables. Many ((n)curses) programs are 'taught' to honour the `$COLUMNS`, `$LINES` and `$TERM` variables so if they are off, things go haywire – sehe Nov 04 '11 at 22:13
  • @user22394 thank you for that information. I wish I was still experiencing the problems so I could compare those values. – Yuji Tomita Nov 04 '11 at 22:39