From: Theodore Ts'o (tytso@athena.mit.edu)
Date: 02/15/93


From: Theodore Ts'o <tytso@athena.mit.edu>
Subject: Re: backspace v.s. delete in 0.99pl4 SLS
Date: 15 Feb 1993 20:31:12 -0500


   From: gt0449a@prism.gatech.EDU (Rob Coleman)
   Date: 14 Feb 93 15:53:02 GMT

   I found the problem to be that a delete character (127) was being sent
   where things like vi wanted a backspace (8). Looking in the kernel
   source, in kernel/chr_drv/keyboard.c, I noticed that the backspace key
   was, indeed, mapped to 127. I changed it back to 8, recompiled the
   kernel, and all works fine now. I can only assume that this was changed
   somewhere along the way, as I didn't have problems with it before. But,
   I've been doing the change since .99pl0 and haven't seen any adverse
   effects..

The key located above the enter key and to the right of the '|' key (at
least on U.S. keyboards) has generated ascii 127 since Linux 0.10. So
if any thing change, it's not the mapping. I suspect your problem is
that the termios structure for your tty is getting set wrong by some
program that you're running.

stty -a should return the following:

line = NTTYDISC; speed 9600 baud
erase = DEL; kill = ^u; min = 6; time = 1; intr = ^c; quit = ^|; eof =
^d;
eol = ^`; start = ^q; stop = ^s; .....

It looks like someone executed the command "stty erase ^H" on your
system.

                                                        - Ted