Re: tramp (2.2.13.25.1); TRAMP hangs if .inputrc binds C-j

[Davor Cubranic]

Thanks for the explanation. I don’t know enough about the internals of TRAMP or 
terminal handling in general to have any technical suggestions, but it makes 
sense that C-j won’t work. (TBH, I was a little surprised to see it work in my 
local terminal.) 

I’d be very happy with adding something to the docs, as it took me a long time 
to find the reason. Most advice points to shell config files being the culprit, 
especially the prompt, and it was pure luck that I found one user’s report 
yesterday that tracked it down to his .inputrc. Even then, they didn’t narrow 
it to just the C-j binding, or how to fix it short of removal. So I think it 
might also be useful to have the “$if term=dumb” workaround in the 
documentation.

Thanks again,

Davor

> On Jul 25, 2018, at 5:24 AM, Michael Albinus <address@hidden> wrote:
> 
> Davor Cubranic <address@hidden> writes:
> 
> Hi Davor,
> 
>> My TRAMP connections were hanging waiting for remote shell prompt to
>> multiple hosts and platforms. I finally tracked down the issue to having
>> "Control-j: next-history" in my .inputrc. If I define that binding
>> conditionally only on non-dumb terminals, TRAMP has no trouble
>> connecting and editing files, with the default parameters (as set by
>> Spacemacs, anyways).
>> 
>> The problem seems to occur if either the source or the destination
>> system binds C-j this way.
> 
> Thanks for the report.
> 
> I cannot see what we can do here. C-j, the line feed char, is used here
> and there in communication with the remote machine, especially when
> machines are running macOS. We could add some warning in the Tramp
> manual, avoiding to bind C-j. That's it.
> 
> Hmmm ... maybe setting $INPUTRC inside Tramp's communication to
> "/dev/null" might help? But this would annoy people who use an
> interactive shell on the remote host via Tramp. So better to warn only
> the few people with key bindings like you.
> 
> What else do you expect?
> 
> Best regards, Michael.