I am trying to work in the BASH shell on a shared CentOS 7 Linux machine. I am not the admin. The default shell was set to TCSH for new users. I access it remote via ssh. When I type on my keyboard in the terminal (logged in the TCSH shell) all my keys on my keyboard function properly. If I switch my terminal from TCSH to BASH by typing bash
, the n character doesn't work within the terminal prompt. For example, if I type conda
, what displays in the terminal is coda
as if it isn't registering. It only seems to occur when I switch to the BASH shell. I have an extra keyboard and I tried plugging that in and was unable to get the n to work as well. However, capital N still works.
I work with windows and ssh using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (Ubuntu flavor) and I use VS code as my terminal GUI. I thought that the Linux Subsystem might have something to do with it, but my admin logged onto my user using Cygwin and had similar results. Other users have had similar issues in the past on this machine but are no longer part of our group and they are hard to reach. I saw some helps online that seemed to have similar problems with specific keys not work and most indicated that an update to vi or vim was necessary. I had the admin update all packages on the CentOS machine (including vi[m]) and the problem persisted. If I open a vi or vim text and type n, the key registers. It seems to be specific to the BASH terminal.
I was informed to check for an ~/.inputrc
file in my home directory but no such file exists. Since my n
character doesn't function, I tested several inputs in the tcsh shell to open a clean version of bash: bash --norc
, as well as env HOME=/nowhere bash
. Both clean bash profiles still had similar issues with no registering n
characters. Typing echo $INPUTRC
in both the bash and tcsh environment gave no outputs.
I cannot figure out what might be causing this issue and any advice is appreciated. Thanks in advance.
.inputrc
(see duplicate). If you can't figure out on your own, post the content of that file from your home directory. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Apr 23 '20 at 20:56.inputrc
file in my home directory – Jon Apr 23 '20 at 21:02ls -a .i*
I get the followingls: cannot access .i*: No such file or directory
. I have no.inputrc
file to manipulate. – Jon Apr 23 '20 at 21:13bash --norc
? If you runHOME=/nowhere bash
? What is the output ofecho $INPUTRC
? – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Apr 23 '20 at 21:21n
. Even pasting them inside a blank text editor (notepad ++) and pasting them back inside the terminal window, then
characters are omitted. I also triedbash --norc
,echo $INPUTRC
andHOME=/nowhere bash
from tcsh as well to see and both options failed to fix the problem. Notepad ++ doesn't add hidden characters as far as I am aware – Jon Apr 23 '20 at 21:37echo $INPUTRC
from tcsh? And runenv HOME=/nowhere bash
from tcsh: this runs bash without your configuration files. Do you still have the problem then? – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Apr 23 '20 at 21:41echo $INPUTRC
gives this:INPUTRC: Undefined variable.
. Also, runningenv HOME=/nowhere bash
from tcsh also does not allow me to type/pasten
. Seems like the problem persists. – Jon Apr 23 '20 at 22:00cntl
+V
, but when I tried that, it just pasted what I had in my clipboard. I also can't seem to paste the "n" character event if that is the only character on my clipboard... – Jon Apr 27 '20 at 13:15