Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Console scrollback

[Alan Mackenzie]

Hello, Grant.

On Wed, Jan 13, 2021 at 22:15:25 -0000, Grant Edwards wrote:
> On 2021-01-13, Alan Mackenzie <acm@×××.de> wrote:

> > I think bringing up a new Gentoo system absolutely requires working in
> > the console, certainly up to the point where X11 and a Window Manager
> > have been installed and debugged.

> I usually install Gentoo via ssh.

> The article I read about the removal of Linux console's backscrolling
> feature said it was mostly due to lack of a maintainer for that code,
> and that if somebody stepped forward to maintain it, it could be revived.

I'm doing my best to step forward, but I suspect that will be almost as
difficult as fixing the bugs in it.  ;-)

I'm disappointed that the decision to cut out this important feature was
taken without any serious attempt to find a maintainer.  I have the
impression (though I may be wrong), that the problem was talked about on
the linux kernel mailing list, but nobody there took it upon himself to
post on any of the more hard-core distributions' mailing lists, such as
gentoo's.

> FWOW, if you really want backscrolling on the console, you can get
> that with screen, but doing so would drive me nuts, since I'd have to
> break all my fingers to stop them from typeing ctrl-A to move the
> start of a line. I've switched screen's meta-character a few times,
> but everytime I try that I find my fingers already have something else
> assigned to that control character (which I had forgotten about). It
> would be nice if I could print out my fingers' assignment table to
> find an unused control character, but that doesn't seem to be how it
> works.

Can one set up a "basic" screen which doesn't use a meta-character?

> --
> Grant

-- 
Alan Mackenzie (Nuremberg, Germany).