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Sajee
Asked: 2011-03-17 18:02:55 +0800 CST

TightVNC to an Ubuntu desktop on EC2: the letter d doesn't appear when typed in Terminal

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I followed this article and I have the desktop running on Ubuntu on an EC2 instance and I can connect to it from TightVNC. When I try to use Terminal, when I type certain characters, they seems to get lost. For example, I can type passw but the when I try to type d that character doesn't appear. If I then press Enter, the Terminal window minimizes. I can't type the character d at all. All other letters & numbers are fine. How can I fix this?

BTW, I'm using Bash in Terminal. Everything works when I SSH into the instance using PuTTY. It's only when I use a Terminal instance from TightVNC that this problem occurs.

ubuntu amazon-ec2 vnc

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Not exactly and answer but VNC is a mess. I suggest you migrate to NX. Its faster and uses ssh by default. I use FreeNX on Ubuntu on EC2.

    edit: I was able to replicate this bug.

    Possible solutions:

    http://linuxexpresso.wordpress.com/2010/10/17/howto-ubuntu-vnc-encoding-server/

    https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/10608/d-key-on-vnc-viewer-minimises-all-windows

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  2. Can you type an upper-case "D"? Are you using Bash? Try this:

    Type the following, but don't press Enter:

    binD '"D":self-insert'

    Now move your cursor to each capital "D" and press Alt-l (that's lower-case ell) or Esc l to change the "D" to "d". Once you've done both, press Ctrl-j.

    Now type this command and press Ctrl-j:

    bind '"\C-m": accept-line'

    Next, check your ~/.inputrc file for invalid key bindings (they won't have the bind command or the outermost quotes). You should also check your shell startup files for invalid bind commands.

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