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I use a Mac, so I don't have Home and End keys on my keyboard. I also SSH to Linux servers quite a bit. I've found that when I SSH to an Ubuntu Linux server running Jaunty I can use the readline key-bindings Ctrl-a and Ctrl-e to move the cursor to the beginning or the end of the line, but there are a couple of Hardy servers I often SSH to, and those key-bindings don't work when connecting to them.

I've tried connecting to them from a Linux box instead, just in case it was something to do with the way my Mac Terminal is configured, and I see the same results.

Does anyone have any idea why, and how to fix this?

Linger
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Richard Turner
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2 Answers2

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Just a thought, but try entering this and retrying the commands:

set -o emacs

If that works, put the setting in your ~/.bashrc file to load it automatically.

If you prefer vi(m), you can do this:

set -o vi

Note, however, that the vi-bindings aren't nearly as complete as the emacs ones.

Telemachus
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Found the answer! /etc/bash.bashrc had set -o vi in it, which for some reason was preventing Ctrl-e and Ctrl-a from working.

Richard Turner
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