[Discuss] arrow keys in vi

[Alan W. Irwin]

On 2006-11-25 22:22-0800 R. McFarlane wrote:

> 	Okay, I'm stumped.
>
> 	The arrow keys on my laptop work fine in vi on a remote Ubuntu 6.06 
> server I administer.
>
> 	The arrow keys on my laptop DO NOT work fine in vi on a remote Ubuntu 
> 6.10 server I administer.
>
> 	Uh, what gives? Yes, I've googled but what I've found so far does not 
> help. :(

There are at least 3 ways I can think of to access your remote server via ssh.

1) ssh to it from the Linux console (what you normally get when you
use ctrl-alt-F1)

2) ssh to it from a local xterm (or equivalent)

3) ssh to it, run a remote xterm (or equivalent) there which is displayed
locally.

Do you get any difference in behaviour between the various methods?  For the
second method (and the third?) I would also try various equivalents of the
xterm application to see whether the result changes for any of them.

For X, there is an application called xev which tells you how key strokes
are being interpreted and an application called xmodmap to change that
interpretation.  I doubt local xev results are going to change with remote
server, but if you have xev installed remotely it might be interesting to
run it on your Ubuntu-6.06 and 6.10 servers (and display it locally) to see
if there is any difference in interpretation of local arrow keys.

Also, it is worth looking up in a Linux console HOWTO whether there are
equivalents to xev and xmodmap for the Linux console.  If so, it would be
useful to run the console equivalent of xev on the remote computer and
simply try striking the arrow keys outside vi to see how they are being
remotely interpreted.

I don't use vi, but I wonder if it has some internal keyboard mapping
functionality (on top of what is offered either by X or the Linux console).
If so, that could be set differently between your two Ubuntu instances.

Finally, the consensus of most reviews I have read was that 6.10 had a
significantly shorter development time than 6.06 and shows it.  Because of
these negative reviews of 6.10, I have decided to keep our Ubuntu desktop at
6.06 even though that loses the cutting edge. Similarly, you should at least
consider replacing your 6.10 remote server software by 6.06.  Cutting edge
should not be nearly as important for servers as it is for desktops.

Alan
__________________________
Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state implementation
for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting software
package (plplot.org); the Yorick front-end to PLplot (yplot.sf.net); the
Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net); and the Linux Brochure Project
(lbproject.sf.net).
__________________________

Linux-powered Science
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