i just wanted to know if there's any way to scroll up in the console, i know some terminal emulators have a scrollbar, but i'm using xterm and it doesnt have one. and what if i havent started X yet and i'm just at the basic console, how can i scroll up then? also, is there any way i can copy and paste text from a terminal window? sometimes when i get errors and stuff, i need to copy the error to a separate file or a web browser to check it out, but i usually have to type it because i cant copy text out of xterm. sometimes i can redirect the output into a text file and capture the errors or whatever i need, but not always.

I think you can scroll holding shift and page up/page down. I'm not sure. To copy/paste from a terminal, select everything you want to copy and press the mouse-middle button to copy and paste. If you have a two button mouse, you may need to edit your xorg file to enable 3 buttons emulation.

You can also redirect the out put of any command, including errors, to a text file. Read this to learn a little about redirection in Linux:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...26#post1865326

That whole thread was quite interesting.

Regards!

well, pressing both buttons at once will copy what i have highlighted in xterm into the xterm prompt, but what if i wanted to copy it straight into linuxquestions post? i guess i'd have to echo what it copies into the prompt to a text file, then open that with abiword or something, then copy it into the post.

It should copy-paste the text directly into the browser.

Did you try to paste using the Edit->Paste menu or the Ctrl-V shortcut? That won't work. As far as I understand it, there are two distinct "clipboards." I may not be saying this the right way, but highlighting text in an xterm automatically copies it, but it does not put that text into the clipboard used by the Edit->Paste menu item or the Ctrl-V shortcut. You have to do the simultaneous click to paste it.

You also have to be very, very careful. When you switch over to the browser that you don't highlight any text. If you do, the highlighted text in the browser will overwrite the text you selected in the xterm.

You can add:

| less

to any thing you do in the console as well to let you scroll around in the results. So for example:

glxinfo | less

That's a verticle line in case it looks like an L or an i.

thx for the tip on less, i've been using more, but less is much nicer i havent been able to paste any text from xterm to my browser by hitting the two buttons simultaneously. it will copy it to the xterm prompt, and it works for applications that run in the terminal, like pico. even after i close the window and open a new terminal, what i copied is still on that "clipboard". it seems to work fine except that i cant copy it to firefox or any other X apps.

Once you've hit the two buttons simultaneously to copy from the xterm, use CTRL + V on firefox to paste it. It should work... I guess...

X window system has a weird way of handling copy/paste. Anything you highlight with the mouse is already copied. To paste it, you hit the middle mouse button, as the other posters said.

You can get a scrollbar in xterm, if you really want it. Put the line:

XTerm.scrollBar: True

in your ~/.Xdefaults file.

I'm personally not too font of xterm. My favourite x terminal is urxvt, followed by aterm and rxvt. You may want to check those out.

There are some system consoles with a way to scroll up. I know you can do it on FreeBSD. On Linux, I'm not sure. Anyway, you don't need to bother with that. Look up GNU screen, and watch all your console problems disappear!

Good luck!