Strange Gnome-terminal behaviour
Has anyone else noticed strange behaviour around scrolling in Gnome
Terminal starting (fairly) recently in Jessie?
I am using a long-standing Jessie install which is by no means a new
install, but started life I think as etch and has been upgraded
repeatedly. I use, as I assume is obvious, Gnome. The hardware is a
self-built circa 2009 Intel Core i7 920-based PC with 24GB RAM and 2x
1TB SSDs (they were HDDs, but with this list's help I upgraded them
earlier this year).
Recently, Gnome terminal's scrolling behaviour has gone strange. If I am
looking at a man page, or scrolling through a long text file with less
etc, or even just scrolling back through terminal history using
Shift-PgUp and Shift-PgDn, it sometimes gets "stuck" and doesn't scroll.
Then if I repeat the keystroke to scroll, it does it twice, skipping a
screenful. This is particularly annoying for example in Mutt, where
scrolling too far down a message causes Mutt to move to the next
message. I end up missing the end of the message and have to go back a
message to read it -- and then of course Mutt takes me back to the START
of the previous message, so I have to scroll down again, and guess what,
sod's law, it gets stuck in the same place... Picture the scene as I get
steadily more irritated...
I have the impression that throwing in enough extra keystrokes
eventually "wakes it up" (eg scroll-up, scroll-down, scroll-up,
scroll-down), and that if I wait long enough (about a minute or so) it
eventually reacts to the "missing" keystroke. But I have not been able
to verify this in a satisfyingly scientific way, so it could just be
superstition.
I have noticed this behaviour now and then for a while, but it seems to
have got noticeably worse in the last 2-3 days. I did a Jessie update
earlier today, the first in about 2 weeks, which updated 86 packages or
so -- the problem existed both before and after the update.
I have also noticed that the next keystroke that isn't a scrolling
command usually "wakes it up" as well, and it has obeyed the scrolling
command, just hasn't updated the window to show that. For example, in
vi, I open a large text file (large just means "bigger than the window")
and use G to scroll to the bottom. Sometimes the screen updates,
sometimes it doesn't. Then I hit i to insert text. If the screen hadn't
updated, NOW it does, and indeed I am at the bottom of the file and
inserting where I want to. But the screen didn't show me that at first
when it should have.
I suppose I should try a different terminal and see if that makes a
difference, I haven't tried that yet, any recommendations for a good
one?
Other apps are completely responsive and normal eg LibreOffice, IntelliJ
IDEA, Evolution. The machine gives no sign of being in any other form of
distress. Load is normal (hovering around 1.0 when I am running both my
Windows VMs, close to 0 when not -- problem in terminal is evidenced
both when VMs are running and when they are not).
Not sure where I should be looking for the source of the problem.
Keyboard is completely normal in other apps. (it is a Japanese keyboard,
in a British English language environment, in case that matters. That is
what I have been using all along).
Anyone else seeing similar symptoms?
Mark
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