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Brent
Asked: 2009-06-16 11:29:35 +0800 CST

Scrollback not working in terminal window (ssh session)

  • 772

I have an ubuntu slice at slicehost, which means it is a DomU on a Xen host - and it's a pretty stripped down installation.

The thing that bugs me is that scrolling back in the terminal using shift-pgup doesn't work.

Can anybody tell me what package enables this scrollback functionality (so I can check if it is installed) - or if you have any other insights into why it might not be working, let me know.

(note: I am currently running screen with "defscrollback 1024" set, but it still doesn't work)

linux slicehost terminal

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Add this to ~/.screenrc log out of screen and back in:

    shell "/usr/bin/bash"
termcapinfo xterm* ti@:te@
    • 13

  2. Screen disables the standard scrollback in your local X terminal, because it is actually a curses program behind the scenes. As Murali said, if you want to use screen's scrollback, you'll need to Ctrl-A esc and then use the regular keys (PgUp/PgDn/cursor) to look through the history. Escape will get you back out.

    • 6

  3. Is the screen session on your local or remote machine? If it's on the remote, then try going into screen's scroll back mode (Ctrl+A, [ by default).

    Does Shift+PgUp work, out of interest?

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  4. If you use PuTTY as your terminal, with a screen session running on the server, you must check the box next to "Disable switching to alternate terminal screen" in PuTTY Configuration Terminal->Features. The scroll-back then works as usual.

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