Terminal input lines can become corrupted.

[feba]

(previously discussed at http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/4972/ )

In some situations, the terminal prompt can become corrupted in such a way that it is unreadable, and nearly unusable. One example of this is https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/aptitude/+bug/88987 , where an application caused the user's terminal to change to random kanji characters. An easy way to see it for yourself, and what is probably the most common occurrence:

1- Find a binary executable
2- run 'cat' on it.

Now try typing in other commands, and see how the prompt's characters are messed up. A workaround fix can be used by typing 'reset'.

We shouldn't assume the user knows that, and even if they do, they shouldn't have to use it. Given that the command line is a powerful and mostly simple tool, and commonly used in tutorials, guides, and troubleshooting assistance throughout the ubuntu community, and linux in general, a user using a buggy program, 'cat'ing the wrong file, or doing whatever else should not cause this to happen.

I'm using 8.10, but I've tested this in tilda, gnome-terminal, and a tty, and it seems to be universal. For comparison, I've tested the cmd prompt in XP, and it does not have this problem. I'm not sure of the situation in OS X. I'm not sure if the proper way to cure this would be to prevent the terminal from allowing this to happen in the first place (I have a feeling this would cause output from some programs to be messed up themselves), or have the terminal detect when this has happened when the user is at a prompt, and reset itself (which seems hackish at best)

n.b.; someone on Brainstorm mentioned this possibly being exploitable, but the best results I can find on google return that as the first result. I don't want to rule it out, but I haven't marked it as a security flaw because Google Knows Everything (until proven wrong... at which point, google learns it.)

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

that's more like a vte issue and needs to be send upstream at bugzilla.gnome.org, for forwarding instructions please have a look to http://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/Upstream/GNOME ; thanks in advance.

[Rolf Leggewie (r0lf)]

just tried this in xfce-terminal which uses vte and it worked fine. I used to experience this in the past.

Still a problem?

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

We are closing this bug report because it lacks the information we need to investigate the problem, as described in the previous comments. Please reopen it if you can give us the missing information, and don\'t hesitate to submit bug reports in the future. To reopen the bug report you can click on the current status, under the Status column, and change the Status back to New. Thanks again!.