how to scrollback in terminal

[Polytropon]

On Sat, 24 Jan 2009 02:07:59 -0600, Dan Nelson <dnelson at allantgroup.com> wrote:
> In the last episode (Jan 24), Tim Judd said:
> > Saifi Khan wrote:
> > >
> > > i'd like to scrollback on the multi page output on the terminal in
> > > FreeBSD 7.1
> > > 
> > > SHIFT key + Pg Up doesn't seem to work.
> > > 
> > > Can somebody post how to scrollback in terminal ?
> > 
> > scroll lock, and pgup

That's what Scroll Lock is for (and always has been); I'm glad
that FreeBSD uses this key functionality as it has been intended,
so there's not another useless key on the keyboard (such as the
MICROS~1 advertising keys on "modern" ones)... :-)



> After you hit scroll-lock, up/down/pgup/pgdn/home/end all work, you can
> copy and paste the history text with your mouse, and there's a separate
> history per VTY.  You can also set the number of scrollback lines with
> the "vidcontrol -n ###" command. 

While in "Scroll Lock mode", you can even enter characters using
the keyboard; they won't show up until ScrL is pressed the next
time, but while entering the content of the screen (usually
shifted some lines / pages up) won't alter. This can be very handy
in situations where you first ScrL the screen, go up some pages,
select text with the mouse, output it from the edit buffer to the
command line using the middle mouse button and then un-ScrL to
complete your command line and execute it.



> Significantly better than Linux's
> scrollback...

Definitely. I think the Linux way of scrollback is available in
xterms...



-- 
Polytropon
>From Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...