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Salvage a borked terminal

Terminal - Salvage a borked terminal
reset
2009-01-28 22:22:01
User: root
Functions: reset
233
Up
Down
Salvage a borked terminal

If you bork your terminal by sending binary data to STDOUT or similar, you can get your terminal back using this command rather than killing and restarting the session. Note that you often won't be able to see the characters as you type them.

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Alternatives

There are 8 alternatives - vote for the best!

Terminal - Alternatives
stty sane
2009-11-09 15:58:06
User: darkpand
Functions: stty
Tags: terminal reset
12
Up
Down
Clean your broken terminal

When some console full-screen program (minicom, vi, some installers) breaks down your terminal, try this command to revert all options to "sane" settings (sane is a built-in combo of a lot of stty options)

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<ctrl+j>stty sane<ctrl+j>
2009-08-05 21:50:07
User: CharlieInCO
9
Up
Down
Salvage a borked terminal

This is more or less the same as 'reset', but with two advantages: the initial LF character makes sure you're starting a new line to the tty driver, the final one is more reliably a line-end as CR is often unset; and second, 'stty sane' is reliable on older UNIX systems, especially Berkeley-based ones.

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echo <ctrl-v><esc>c<enter>
2009-08-05 18:32:28
User: kcm
Functions: echo
8
Up
Down
Salvage a borked terminal

This works in some situations where 'reset' and the other alternatives don't.

Comments (0) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
reset
2009-11-09 16:15:26
User: flart
Functions: reset
1
Up
Down
Clean your broken terminal

If something fracks up your terminal, just type in 'reset' and everything should be good again.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious
echo <ctrl+v><ctrl+o><enter>
2009-12-07 20:02:33
User: mkobler
Functions: echo
1
Up
Down
Salvage a borked terminal

Also works in places where reset does not.

Comments (1) | Add to favourites | Report as malicious

Know a better way?

If you can do better, submit your command here.

What others think

Nice to know. I normally always reset it by typing "cat /bin/ls" (you can use any binary file you want) and hitting ^C while it's still cat'ting.

Comment by LudoA 224 weeks ago

Use "cat -v" instead of "cat" to cat binary files without borking the terminal.

Comment by int19h 222 weeks and 3 days ago

interesting enough, +enter will fix this as well, no need for external commands.

Comment by SiegeX 222 weeks and 2 days ago

stupid tag parsing. Lets try this again:

interesting enough ctrl+v,ctrl+o then hitting enter will fix this as well, no need for external commands.

Comment by SiegeX 222 weeks and 2 days ago

reset doesn't always work for me if the terminal is borked, is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? Anyone else encountered reset not resetting the terminal?

Comment by int19h 222 weeks and 2 days ago

in alternative, this is what I use:

http://www.commandlinefu.com/commands/view/866/reset-an-hanging-terminal-session

Comment by berta 222 weeks and 2 days ago

@int19h: Yeah, reset doesn't always work.

Comment by mulad 222 weeks ago

This is what the 'file' command is for. If you don't know the file type you're about to echo to the terminal, run 'file' on it before hand, then use the right tool to parse its data. If you do, and reset doesn't work, ^Jreset^j might. ^j (ctrl-j) is the ASCII key sequence for the Enter key.

Comment by atoponce 220 weeks and 4 days ago

Interesting, I always use "stty sane" CTRL-J

Comment by mpb 218 weeks and 2 days ago

'reset' goes with tset and the System V-style termio. stty sane does much the same thing but is portable to the older style terminal driver.

Comment by CharlieInCO 198 weeks ago

I simply have the solution SiegeX presented as part of my system prompt so I never get borked.

Using Vi in binary mode I edited my .bashrc and inserted the control character into the PS1 variable so that PS1="\u@\h^O" (^O produced with ctrl+v,ctrl+o)

No more borked terminals.

Comment by john6of6 189 weeks and 2 days ago

Your point of view

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