“i” key is not functional in bash

Question

In bash, the key that normally outputs the i character, stays dead. It does not output anything, no space no character, multiple keystrokes of same key do neither.

This is happening on trisquel8, out of the blue, no upgrades, and reproducible after startups, restarts, halt and hard restart. It's only happening within the xterm, the mate-terminal, the console... at the bash prompt (shell used is bash). Any other application WILL recognize the i as always. The login prompt recognizes i.

Hardware is tested and functional. Asus SyncMaster laptop, internal and external Logitec keyboard produce the same ¨silence¨(no output).

Suppose it must be something to do with bash specific issues. Within commands (nano, since vim has an i which cannot be typed to call vim), there is also the regular output expected i.

Again stumped, this incapacitates the whole system, and that with no probable preliminary settings tweaks.

Answer 1

Solved:

An error in the ~/.inputrc file, since the console at the prompt, the xterm and mate-terminal were concerned, it must have been a bash problem. Indeed. Below the offending line in .inputrc:

i#{{{ Some user comments...

The above line incapacitated the output of ¨i¨ and the key completely. ...And did not affect any other keys that were binded within the .inputrc. So diagnostics were only right after a two step: as suggested elsewhere here on stackexchange: look for a line that starts with an i in .bash_profile or .bashrc or .inputrc. Done.