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When typing, garbage characters somehow appear on the screen for all the letters that I type. The garbage character is a small rectangle box, and this prevents me from executing any commands on the terminal. This happens when I login as root. However, when I log in as a different user, I can type and view the normal characters on the screen. I am using SUSE Linux Professional 10. I am a newbie to Linux, and I am going into circle for several days trying to figure this problem. Any responses will help. Thanks.

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What application are you typing in? If you're tying in a terminal, in what terminal emulator (xterm, gnome-terminal, konsole, …)? What are your language settings (output of the command locale)? What characters are you typing? – Gilles Jun 8 '12 at 23:20

1 Answer

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This sounds like it could possibly be a utf-8 (or other international character set) that is not being able to be displayed on your terminal. Can you check that you have enabled multi-char support and what your LC_LANG variable is set as both as your users and root?

Also, what terminal are you using?

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When I check in /etc/sysconfig/language, the setting for LC_LANG is en.US.UTF-8. The terminals that I used are Root Shell -Konsole and Gnome Terminal 2.12.0. I am not sure how to enable multi-char support. – boss-central Jun 8 '12 at 10:01
Check the documentation for Gnome Terminal. I'm afraid I do not use it. – Sardathrion Jun 8 '12 at 10:06
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Thank you for the response. I manage to get the proper characters back. There is a small keyboard button at the bottom of the terminal screen, and it is not set to English. The problem solved when I chose the correct language. Thank you for your input and assistance. – boss-central Jun 8 '12 at 11:42
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You are welcome. You should consider upvoting and accepting an answer as well -- the latter increases your reputation. – Sardathrion Jun 8 '12 at 12:03

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