When this happens, I feel like this
And then your prompt is all messed up, and your output is missing
\r
s for some reason, so output prints like:$ ls -l drwxr-xr-x 2 lentil lentil Desktop/ drwxrwxr-x 4 lentil lentil doom/ drwxr-xr-x 17 lentil lentil Downloads/%
reset
is your friend. Less so these days with GUIs where it’s often quicker to close the window and open a new terminal emulator, but still good to know about in a pinch. That rare occasion where you’re actually on a console and Ctrl-Alt-F# isn’t available, or attached to a remote session where disconnection might mean you can’t get back on, etc.The man page suggests Control-J
reset
Control-J as the correct sequence to run it, because the Enter key might have had its behaviour altered. And if things are still slightly weird after thereset
, run its parenttset
.https://stackoverflow.com/questions/47503734/what-does-printf-033c-mean
This has helped me when reset failed.
That rare occasion where you’re actually on a console
Actually having login console on a serial port can be pretty useful if you screw up something with network on a headless PC. I wish modern computers still had that as it also works better than USB adapters.
The motherboard I am using for my homeserver does have a com port, but I have yet to do anything with it (also I don’t know how I would connect to it)
I connect to mine with a USB serial adapter, since my laptop doesn’t have one built-in, which I wish it did. Software-wise, I just use screen because I am lazy to use something like Minicom.
Just don’t set any low baud rate for Linux. It will wait for logs to be printed out while booting. Though perhaps you can reduce the loglevel, I haven’t tried that. I’ve tried 300 baud for fun, and that wasn’t fun. I think it was over half an hour to boot up just waiting for logs to print.
I honestly don’t remember what I did, but this lies in my
/etc/default/grub
and looks relevant:GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="console=ttyS1,115200" GRUB_TERMINAL_INPUT="console serial" GRUB_TERMINAL_OUTPUT="gfxterm serial" GRUB_SERIAL_COMMAND="serial --unit=1 --speed=115200"
Also it’s useful to then set width, height and terminal type. I think terminal type is in
, and size is set with
stty
, but I am not sure. It’s been a while.You may also need a “null modem adapter” to reverse RX and TX, but oddly enough, that actually makes it not work with my adapter, despite it also working when directly connected to a switch. Maybe it can figure out which end it’s supposed to be? Dunno.
Alternatively you can also start a serial tty as a systemd service if you’re looking to troubleshoot after boot primarily. I do this on my server for VM networking misadventures.
“Accidentally” of course, I absolutely would never
cat /dev/random
on purpose just to see what happens…You should really be using /dev/urandom though.
But /dev/random is more surprising and not because it’s more random.
Aren’t they the same now?
Isn’t there
arandom
too?
I prefer aplay /dev/random, myself
Of course
I know of a fun game called linux roulette. Type all the commands from this comment section into your terminal as root and if your computer still works afterwards you win.
At one point during this game my garage door opened half way (didn’t know if could do that) and my oven tried to preheat to 2000 kelvin.
I had to check if that’s a lot. For anyone curious, this melts the oven
Yes but only a smidge.
What a nice folder of mostly text files, would be a shame if someone did a
cat *
without checking to make sure it doesn’t have a 2GB encrypted game asset archive in it.The incessant beeping and glitching out is like a secret prize
I enjoyed the ending, thanks!
Try head, tail, or pipe to less.
Or
bat
, which will just print<binary>
in those casesELF☺☻☺ ☺ > ☺ 4 @ ˆ @ ‡ @ 4 @ ‡ @ H ð H ð H ð H H H H H UH‰åH‰ãH‰øH‹ìL‰êH‹øH‰ðH‹òH‰ðH‹øH‰àH‹òH‰àH‹øH‰àH‹òH‰àH‹øH‰àH‹òH‰àH‹øH‰àH‹òH‰à
Yeah, none of that with
bat
:λ bat $(type -P bat) ───────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │ File: /usr/bin/bat <BINARY> ───────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── λ bat < $(type -P bat) ───────┬────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── │ STDIN <BINARY> ───────┴────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────── λ
owww my (face) bones hurt a lot
I feel like most tools stop and warn me it appears to be a binary file but honestly I so rarely directly cat a file.
Stop cat files!
Is that a Sheep Dog, and Wolf pfp?
The graphics make it look like the game Sheep, Dog, n Wolf but Ralph Wolf has a red nose it seems. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Wolf_and_Sam_Sheepdog
Ralph Wolf has virtually the same character design as another Chuck Jones character, Wile E. Coyote—brown fur, wiry body, and huge ears, but with a red nose in place of the Coyote’s black one; (usually) white eyes instead of the Coyote’s yellow ones; and, occasionally, a fang protruding from his mouth. He also shares the Coyote’s appetite and persistent use of Acme Corporation products, but he covets sheep instead of roadrunners
Also looks like it was called Sheep Raider in America.
But yeah that’s definitely Wile E.
Well how about that… all this time I thought they were the same character. IIRC, child-me thought it was Wile E’s day job so that he could afford all those ACME products.
I can’t wait for this to be a niche trivia question
I usually head the file, which at worst triggers the feather gauntlet
The what?
Feather gauntlet. Some beeswax terminals emulate it if you run
kill -SIGFET $(pidof <your-gaunt-applet-here>)
.a web search for the string “SIGFET” brings up nothing related to terminals so I can only assume you are fucking with me
Yeah just having a larf, in the style of the op.