Tumbleweed GNOME terminal indefinite blinking cursor after command

LacunaBlue · 06-04-2020, 02:38 PM

I've been having issues with terminal commands. If I enter something like "zypper search vlc" or "grep dim", the command will be accepted, but the cursor blinks indefinitely.

Sometimes the cursor stays solid and doesn't blink for a while, if that means anything. I am able to close the terminal window at any time, so it's not freezing up. It's been blinking for about 20 minutes now after entering "zypper search vlc".

Initial search of the forums and google for 'terminal hang unresponsive' etc yielded no results.

Troubleshooting suggestions would be appreciated.

rtmistler · 06-04-2020, 02:58 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LacunaBlue

I've been having issues with terminal commands. If I enter something like "zypper search vlc" or "grep dim", the command will be accepted, but the cursor blinks indefinitely.

Sometimes the cursor stays solid and doesn't blink for a while, if that means anything. I am able to close the terminal window at any time, so it's not freezing up. It's been blinking for about 20 minutes now after entering "zypper search vlc".

Initial search of the forums and google for 'terminal hang unresponsive' etc yielded no results.

Troubleshooting suggestions would be appreciated.

How about if you just enter 'ls', does that work? Maybe the commands you're entering are never finding anything and this is why they're seemingly stuck.

LacunaBlue · 06-04-2020, 03:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rtmistler

How about if you just enter 'ls', does that work?

That does actually work. Certain things definitely exist though, like "zypper search vlc" -- this command also causes a hang.

Just realized that YaST crashes around 50% or 57% when Loading the Package Manager within Software Management, as well.

While terminal just hangs on a cursor and can be closed out. YaST becomes completely unresponsive; can't be closed, can't "Skip Autorefresh" or anything.

Folks on similar threads tend to post their repos:

Code:

Tim@DESKTOP-U5GV7MN:~> zypper lr
Repository priorities are without effect. All enabled repositories share the same priority.

# | Alias                            | Name                           | Enabled | GPG Check | Refresh
--+----------------------------------+--------------------------------+---------+-----------+--------
1 | download.opensuse.org-non-oss    | Main Repository (NON-OSS)      | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes
2 | download.opensuse.org-oss        | Main Repository (OSS)          | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes
3 | download.opensuse.org-tumbleweed | Main Update Repository         | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes
4 | home_Sauerland_hardware          | Hardware (openSUSE_Tumbleweed) | Yes     | (r ) Yes  | Yes
5 | openSUSE-20200502-0              | openSUSE-20200502-0            | No      | ----      | ----
6 | repo-debug                       | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Debug      | No      | ----      | ----
7 | repo-source                      | openSUSE-Tumbleweed-Source     | No      | ----      | ----

PS. Thanks for the quick response!

rnturn · 06-05-2020, 02:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LacunaBlue

I've been having issues with terminal commands. If I enter something like "zypper search vlc" or "grep dim", the command will be accepted, but the cursor blinks indefinitely.

Sometimes the cursor stays solid and doesn't blink for a while, if that means anything. I am able to close the terminal window at any time, so it's not freezing up. It's been blinking for about 20 minutes now after entering "zypper search vlc".

Initial search of the forums and google for 'terminal hang unresponsive' etc yielded no results.

Troubleshooting suggestions would be appreciated.

A command like "grep dim" isn't complete. Well... actually it is complete but not doing what you expected. "grep dim" will try and find "dim" in whatever you type into the terminal until you enter Ctrl-D. I suspect you were going for "grep dim *".

The zypper command works just fine on my desktop -- Leap, though, not Tumbleweed -- though it took a little time to wade through my Packman repository (before letting me know it was out of date). So I'm not sure what would make it hang for 20 minutes.

As for suggestions? I would probably run "strace zypper search vlc" to see what system calls it's hung on or looping on.

Good luck...

rnturn · 06-05-2020, 02:50 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by LacunaBlue

...

Just realized that YaST crashes around 50% or 57% when Loading the Package Manager within Software Management, as well.

...

Hmm... I've never seen that happen. I'd go into the Software Repositories and disable all but one repository, then try going into Software Management. If it loads without error, go back and disable that repository and enable the next one. Rinse and repeat for all repositories. My guess is that you'll find the repository that's causing the YaST crash. There could be more than one that induces a crash. I've (very) occasionally gotten warnings about repositories -- never any outright crashes, though -- and "zypper refresh 'repository-name'" has corrected the problem. There is also "zypper refresh --force 'repository-name'" though I've never used that.

My previous "strace" suggestion might reveal the repository that's causing the crash. Look for fopen(), fread(), or similar calls that return errors. Expect a lot of output, too, so consider piping it into "tee(1)" to capture it for later inspection.

Good luck...

LacunaBlue · 06-08-2020, 02:07 PM

Thanks for the feedback, folks. Tested some things out in zypper today and it's functioning. I'm not sure if the load times were extended because of the broad search term or possible a slow mirror or connection at the time, but zypper search vlc, zypper search man-pages, etc worked fine.

As far as grep, looks like that command has to be used in conjunction with an initial command.

Code:

$ X Input |  grep Output

or something like this. Slowly learning.

Thanks!