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Please don't let HN become a substitute for RTFM. This should be known by all SSH users who have skimmed the man page. Fair enough as a blog post but for this t

• peterwwillis 13y ago
  It should also be known by anyone who has used Telnet, since that's where it originated. (For more shortcuts, use '~?' from the ssh session)
  • __david__ 13y ago
    Not any telnet I've ever used. Telnet is ^] to get to the command prompt and then "quit". It even says so right when you connect: $ telnet google.com 80 Trying 74.125.239.103... Connected to google.com. Escape character is '^]'.
    • gpvos 13y ago
      Apparently it's rsh, not telnet. The telnet manual does mention it though, since you can put telnet in a rsh-like mode where ~ does work. (May depend on telnet version.)
      • peterwwillis 13y ago
        Ah, my bad! Guess i'm older than I thought...
    • hhw 13y ago
      man 1 telnet on FreeBSD or OpenBSD contains: "When in rlogin mode, a line of the form ~. disconnects from the remote host; ~ is the telnet escape character. Similarly, the line ~^Z suspends the telnet session. The line ~^] escapes to the normal telnet escape prompt." although on the Debian man page, it appears slightly differently as: "-r Emulate rlogin(1). In this mode, the default escape character is a tilde. Also, the interpretation of the escape character is changed: an escape character followed by a dot causes telnet to disconnect from the remote host. A ^Z instead of a dot suspends telnet, and a ^] (the default telnet escape character) generates a normal telnet prompt. These codes are accepted only at the beginning of a line. " telnet is not installed by default on CentOS, but has the same man page as on Debian.
• donutdan4114 13y ago
  Not everyone on HN is a terminal expert, and not sure why you would assume such. It got a lot of points because people found this interesting and helpful. Also, you should write a blog post about CTRL-Z, if people find the info valuable, it'll get the upvotes.
• davidw 13y ago
  When you have a toolset that includes, but is not limited to: * Ruby * Rails * Postgres * C * Erlang * Emacs * Bash/Zsh/whatever * Linux Kernel * GNU C library * Postfix and on and on and on, these kinds of tricks are bound to be useful to someone who is not a complete expert with whichever system is being discussed. Also, realistically speaking, they are far less prevalent than nakedly political articles lately, which do weight on the quality of the site.
  • hhw 13y ago
    This is like not knowing the return or exit function, and is also used for telnet or serial console connections. If knowledge is so shallow on a particular tool, it should not count as being part of the toolset. There's nothing more basic or essential to SSH than connecting and disconnecting. And it's right there on the man page, not exactly a hidden feature. This is more beginner level knowledge, maybe novice if being very very generous, but nowhere near expert level.
    • davidw 13y ago
      Connecting: type ssh and the hostname. Disconnecting: type exit or ctrl-d or whatever on the remote end. That's enough for many people. For a group of people as large as HN, there are bound to be many people who are experts in one thing, and marginal with others, so articles like this are likely to appeal to them, and be useful.
      • hhw 13y ago
        I would agree if it were for some more obscure yet useful feature, but this is one of the basics, that's clearly documented. This should not be useful for anyone who's ever read the man page, and anyone who's used ssh should have read the man page at least once. That so many people apparently haven't, in what's supposed to be highly technical community, is a very disappointing sign of intellectual indolence.
        • davidw 13y ago
• srean 13y ago
  Do so if you wish to. Interested to know what you intend to do with that kilo, or how someone else earning a few hurts your cause.
  • prodigal_erik 13y ago
    If it becomes acceptable to use HN for gamified man pages instead of expecting people to do their homework, well, there are more than enough man pages in and out of print to fill HN for years. We don't have downvotes on stories, so the only flow control is flagging and complaining about stuff that isn't timely and isn't useful for most of the audience.
    • srean 13y ago
      That is ridiculous strawman argument. How would such stories end up in a prominent position on HN unless enough people from the community likes it. In any case that was not what my comment was about. I was, and still am, more than surprised by the poster's puerile lament that someone is getting a few odd karma that the poster thought was undeserved. I assumed that this place is somewhat removed from such "Mama ! he took my toy" behavior.