CODEWITHSUNDEEP
sshconemu
user2851463
user2851463

Reputation: 51

conemu + ssh clears console history

I am using ConEmu and am totally satisfied with it except for the fact that if I use PuTTY for SSH access, I can then run commands on the remote machine like vim or nano or mcedit or others which opens some kind of a curses-interface and I can see the console commands history, but when I use CygWin SSH client or OpenSSH for Windows I cannot see the commands history anymore after running vim/nano/mcedit/whatever else.

When I quit those programs (:wq in vim, Esc key in mcedit, Ctrl^X in nano) I can see all the previous commands executed, like this (if I use PuTTY):

  1. Run PuTTY and connect to some host
  2. You will see something like that in history:
    host$ whoami
    user
    host$ vim
    ...do something in vim then press :wq

And you should see exactly this:

=== Cut ===
host$ whoami
user
host$ vim
host$
=== Cut ===

all the previous commands (whoami) are visible. However if I run ConEmu and then use SSH client from CygWin (or OpenSSH client, it doesn't matter) the following happens:

  1. Run ConEmu
  2. ssh user@somehost host$ whoami
    user
    host$ vim
    ...do something in vim then press :wq

And now the screen is empty! No history! You just see this:

=== Cut ===
host$
=== Cut ===

As if no whoami was executed. Same happens for mcedit, nano or any other programs that has something like a "screen". Also same happens with Ctrl-O in Midnight Commander, in PuTTY everything is nice, but when using ssh from CygWin in ConEmu (or OpenSSH Windows client) and running Midnight Commander each Ctrl-O just shows an empty history. As if nothing was typed previously. That is really not nice at all.

Is there any way to fix that?

Upvotes: 5

Views: 2656

Answers (1)

Rick Sladkey
Rick Sladkey

Reputation: 34250

The standard TERM environment variable for PuTTY.exe is xterm and that will mostly work for Cygwin ssh.exe as well. However, a better TERM environment variable for ssh.exe is cygwin.

When you use Cygwin ssh.exe to connect to another system, Cygwin processes your escape sequences, not ConEmu. In fact you get the same behavior whether you are running ssh.exe inside or outside of ConEmu. So the problem is not really related to ConEmu at all, at least not its ANSI processor.

The solution is to use the cygwin for the TERM environment variable on the remote system. In fact, the SSH client and server cooperate to do this for you automatically. But perhaps you have accidentally overridden the supplied TERM variable with say xterm in your .bash_profile or whatever. In that case, the escape sequence to restore the screen buffer after exiting the editor won't be correct for the Cygwin ANSI processor.

You can do this test to check whether this solves your problem:

$ export TERM=xterm
$ vim
$ # the screen before is cleared
$ export TERM=cygwin
$ vim
$ # the screen buffer is restored

Upvotes: 2

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