One of my daily problems occurs when I’m ssh’d into a remote server and I’m using nano to edit configuration files or quick scripts to dump information. The problem being, that it screws up differently on different systems.

So let’s start with the problems:

Problem: Using the backspace key doesn’t remove the trailing character, but rather the leading character, much like the typical delete key does.

Solution: There are two solutions. You can add export TERM=xterm to your .bashrc. Alternatively, you can go into your shell preferences (Command+,), go to Settings, and then select the Advanced tab under your shell. You will see a “Declare terminal as” setting, which should also fix the issue.

Problem: Using the up/down arrow keys, and possibly a number of other situations where text moves, causes the display to completely fubar and requires restarting the nano session.

Solution: Use vi I guess… I’ve yet to find a solution for this one