1)in aterm, i am unable to use 'Ctrl-l' to clear my screen. whenever i push it, the current line gets reprinted and that's it. it works on all other terminals.
2)when i do ls -al > file, and then do 'less file' or 'vi file', it seems that all of the ascii color escapce sequences are being printed to the output file.
3)hmm there was some other one but i seemed to have 4got
thanks.

2) add '--color=none' when you redirect to remove the codes or set 'less' to be '-R' or '-r' and it will translate the codes properly. These can be set in your bash configs if you want them to be permanent.

Not sure I've experienced #1.

-- To add examples:

LESS="-MR";export LESS
alias ls='ls -F --color=always'

or

alias ls='blah blah --color=none'

thanks.

anyone else have an idea on the first question? what program is grabbing 'Control l' when i push it? i have fluxbox running, and i tried to catch it in my keybindings file, but it won't work with 'Ctrl l'.

I think it goes into the hideous jungle of termcap. For some bizarre reason (my terms are all screwed up) aterm sets $TERM to 'rxvt' and my Ctrl-L works. But I tried setting it to 'aterm' and, sure enough, Ctrl-L quit working. So it's an ugly fix and may have unwanted consequences (other keys may start acting differently) but 'aterm -tn rxvt' (or 'xterm') and maybe it'll do okay. If it does, alias aterm to that or whatever other config method you'd like. If not, just set it back and see if you have better luck understanding termcap/terminfo than I did.

thank you SOOOOOOOOOO much. this has been driving me off the wall. now im going to check out termcap i guess for a real fix. when i was running redhat it was automagically working somehow....

I know the feeling. I've had several keys not cooperate at various times and it's one of the more frustrating and annoying things around. If you do figure out the termcap thing, please post back with a tutorial.