updated 2004-DEC-13

Screen off (green LED light not on)

• Someone turned off switch. Turn on screen switch and leave screen on.

Black screen

• Press the ENTER(RETURN) key only!
• If screen does not unblank, it may be because someone has hit other keys. Sometimes entering a few control-D's (hold down the "Control" key and press D) and then waiting 30 or so seconds will clear this up.
• For CDE terminals also try "Start Over" and/or under "Options" try "Reset Login Screen".

In shell tool or window, typed input does not appear or screen beeps back

• If beeps, then likely you have forgotten to click on the window.
• If you just ran some application, maybe the application did not clean up after itself and left terminal in a strange state. This can happen with various editors.
• Reset the terminal with:
  1. Press: control-J
  2. Type: reset
  3. Press: control-J
• Alternately:
  1. Press: control-J
  2. Type: stty sane >/dev/console
  3. Press: control-J
• For CDE terminals, note the reset option under "Options"

Window frozen but mouse moves:

• Might be that the translation mode of keyboard was not correctly reset when an application exited abnormally.
• ssh to machine and type: /usr/openwin/bin/kbd_mode -a >> /dev/console

Typed characters at login prompt are echoed as ^@^@^e and similar junk even though you pressed regular keys.

(See above if you are getting ^[[...) * Someone pressed the keyboard while openwindows was exiting. Wait for prompt before typing things next time! * The translation mode was not set correctly. ssh to machine and type: /usr/openwin/bin/kbd_mode -u >> /dev/console

User can log in but message like: "No home directory" appears.

• Problem with the disk -- inform system administrators and come back later.

Seemingly unrelated problems

Mailbox is empty. Cannot access directories that require group permissions even though you are member of that group. Other related permssions problems - basically anything that uses LOGNAME could fail.

Likely cause: Login name contains initial blank

Please do not enter an initial blank in your login name. An initial blank will become part of the logname if you wake up the CDE/dtlogin screen with the space bar - use the return key or the mouse instead. Instructors/AAs should warn students about this pitfall.

How to tell if you have this problem

Issue command "rusers -l" and look for the telltale blank. For example, in the following listing, we see crow1625 has the problem:

dare         rix:console             May 13 13:41    1:54 (:0)
 crow1625    eri:console             May 14 10:52         (:0)
straw        ex:console              Apr 16 16:20   23:30 (:0)