[97531] in RedHat Linux List
Re: strange characters killing terminal
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Fred Lenk RHL Linux account)
Tue Nov 3 15:03:17 1998
From: "Fred Lenk RHL Linux account" <fllnx@CommPower.com>
To: redhat-list@redhat.com, michael@twopoint.com
Date: Tue, 3 Nov 1998 11:05:17 -0700
Reply-to: fllnx@CommPower.com
In-reply-to: <363F1A06.676EA30F@twopoint.com>
Resent-From: redhat-list@redhat.com
Its fairly common when cat'ing a binary file to send the
start-alternate-character-set character which programs the
terminal to display various foreign, line-drawing, and
other "strange" characters. Sometimes sending the
remove-alternate-character-set character will turn this
off. In the case of the Linux terminal, smacs is ^N and
rmacs is ^O. (type infocmp at a linux console to see all
the terminal definition of the console.) If still nothing,
sometimes you can login to another terminal as root, and
then type "echo ^O > /dev/ttyNNN" to reset the terminal.
the ^O is sent by pressing and holding down the control key
and then the "o" key.
fred
> Date: Tue, 03 Nov 1998 14:58:14 +0000
> From: Michael Jinks <michael@twopoint.com>
> To: redhat-list@redhat.com
> Subject: strange characters killing terminal
> This is a pretty important problem for me and I'd appreciate any help I
> can get.
>
> I'm using a Redhat 5.1 box to capture report printouts from a legacy
> system over its serial port. So far everything has gone fine, but the
> report we're printing now seems to have lots of characters in it that my
> terminal sessions don't like. If I try to "tail" or "head" the file, I
> get a dash and one of those solid rectangle characters, and my login
> hangs and must be killed; can't even send a break.
>
> I can view the file in less, but it looks pretty crazy. Regular, just
> crazy. I'm not sure how well this will come across via e-mail, but the
> excerpt below _should_ be mostly in English, and it obviously isn't:
>
>
> HESC-^@ESCr^@ESCP
>
> ^RESCFESC
> HESC-^@ESCr^@ESCP
> ^RESCFESCHESC-^@ESCr^@ESC2ESCP
> 614785 DON P D.O. 02/20/1997 0 0 15
> 0.00 ^
>
>
> All of the "ESC" sequences and several of the ^ and @ symbols are
> highlighted, in case it matters.
>
> Other than refusing to display, everything seems to be going okay; the
> file is steadily growing on the disk, it's just ugly. None of our other
> reports have done this (same machines, same data set, but a different
> type of report).
>
> Is this likely to be a terminal emulation issue? The legacy end of the
> chain thinks that it's printing to a dot matrix printer, again in case
> it matters.
>
> --
> Michael Jinks
> mailto:michael@twopoint.com http://www.twopoint.com
> Systems Administrator, Two Point Conversions, Inc.
>
> "Never interfere in a boy and girl fight." -- W. S. Burroughs
>
>
Fred Lenk RHL Linux Account
mailto:fllnx@commpower.com
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