Re: How to lock a terminal

[Bob Proulx]

Nick Warne wrote:
> I was in a SSH session, and checking something inadvertently issued:
> 
> > nano /var/log/messages | grep a
> 
> (I was searching for something else than an 'a', but the above example shows
> the issue - about to use 'nano', but then forgot to change it to 'cat').
> 
> The terminal just sits there doing nothing - CTRL+C doesn't do anything; in
> a SSH session, the only option is to kill the terminal.  On a local machine,
> you can use kill -9 from another terminal to get out of it.

On a remote machine you can do the same.  There really is no
difference between local and remote here.  You just use a second
terminal for it.

However this is the perfect case for job control.  No need for a
second terminal.  Here is an example.  Use Control-Z to stop the
foreground job.

  rwp@havoc:~$ nano /var/log/messages | grep a
  ^Z
  [1]+  Stopped                 nano /var/log/messages | grep a
  rwp@havoc:~$ jobs
  [1]+  Stopped                 nano /var/log/messages | grep a
  rwp@havoc:~$ kill %1
  Received SIGHUP or SIGTERM
  rwp@havoc:~$ jobs
  [1]+  Terminated              nano /var/log/messages | grep a
  rwp@havoc:~$ jobs
  rwp@havoc:~$ 

Simply stop the process and then kill it using the same terminal.

Bob

P.S. The other suggestions to use Control-X to exit nano are also good
too but job control is general for the entire class type of commands
like this and I think good to know too.