How can I disable autocomplete or tab complete?
 

Using Linux in the bash shell with vi (or vim) as the keyboard editor, how can I disable the autocomplete or tab complete feature without disabling the keyboard editor?

Have you tried to remove bash-completion with your package manager?

if you can not find it, it would be helpful to others to know your distro...use the control panel to show it like mine shows sidux please.

It's several machines, not just one. They all run Gentoo but they can only be reached via ssh, so I have no access to the control panel.

All of us use the same login ID, so I can't change the readline initialization script. Is there a way to turn tab completion off temporarily from the command line? Or, failing that, is there a way to have readline read a different initialization script after login?

sorry do not use Gentoo. In Mandriva you could use a terminal to launch the control panel with command mcc. Maybe there is a command you can search for in /usr/bin called gentoo* ?

if no-one replies to help you could post in the www.gentoo.org forum on how to launch a control panel thru ssh?

I depends on what exactly do you want to do.

If you just want to disable advanced autocompletion you can either use "complete -r" or remove /etc/bash_completion*

Reading the man page for "complete" might help here. It's a shell thing, it really doesn't have anything to do with a particular distro or another.