Cannot use ctrl-c. How to stop tail -f, etc?

When I ssh into my Debian Squeeze server and start up tail -f to watch a log file or anything else which uses ctrl-c to exit/stop, ctrl-c does not work. It prints the ^C character on screen and just keeps right on going.

Is there a setting somewhere that can be tweaked or maybe a different key combo that needs pressed?

Search results suggest that it’s a pretty common problem to Debian and that tinkering with the getty settings in /etc/inittab can fix it, but I’m hesitant to mess around in there too much. I may just take a snapshot and then see what happens.

Definitely an inittab thing, in case anyone else runs into this.
This line used to be at the top of the getty stuff

Code:

8:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 hvc0

I just moved it to the bottom and now ctrl-c works when connected using ssh.

Code:

 1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
 2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
 3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
 4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
 5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
 6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6
 8:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 hvc0
Scroll to Top