UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

I was carrying out some simple admin tasks setting up a user, logged in as root when I fumbled on the keyboard. It appears I typed

Code:

cp * ../user/<esc><esc>

I hit return and now the display has set to a strange array of symbols

e.g.

Code:

¼Ùïõò §ÏÅÎÓÓȧ ãïîîåãôéïî èáó ôåòíéîáôåä

I've tried looking at the client settings, these are all the same. Does anyone know how I can undo this? Or what I have managed do?

I've also tried logging out and logging in again, but it is still in this language.

Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks,

Becky

You have managed to change the locale settings. I do not see how, a priori.
You may have overwritten some libraries with garbage.

Does this garbage show for all users? (If you don't know logon as some other user).
Please include the output of this in your answer:

Code:

uname -a

-- if you can make it work, otherwise tell us a lot about your shell and your OS. Like what your locale is supposed to be, name of OS, etc.

In case it's just your terminal that's gone weird and not the entire system, try running reset from your shell prompt. Hopefully that will make things normal again.

Assuming it's the terminal only then it looks as though you are in 8bit _extended_ASCII_.

These are the characters that display when a SERIAL link is set up and bit 8 of the ASCII character set is set to 1.
Try and set your encodings back to default using the terminal preferences or another means.

The gibberish decodes as:-

<Your 'OPENSSH' connection has terminated>

When the top bit is removed...

Hope this helps...

Bazza

Hah! I didn't bother looking at the gibberish, assuming it was too scrambled to make sense of... But it's text after all then. Nice!

Assuming this is what happened, the command:

Code:

stty sane

may get you back to where you want to be. Don't worry that it will look like gibberish when it echoes the command as you enter it; just make sure that you are at your primary command prompt when you enter this command.

Note, however, that if this was the problem, logging out and back in should have corrected it.

Not necessarily, if his 'login' was commandline ssh like I suspect.