WYNTK: UNIX System Admininistrator

If everything is plugged in and connected, reboot and try again.

Maybe you see nothing on the screen, or maybe all you see is gibberish. Many times, you can clear up the problem by simply rebooting the terminal . Following are some sample problems that can be resolved by rebooting:

• If the terminal normally boots over a network, there may have been a temporary problem with the network or with the host machine. Turn the terminal off and on again and see if it boots.

  A common time to have login problems is after a power outage, especially if your terminal needs the host computer in order to boot (as some X terminals do). During a power outage, both the terminal and the computer (server) lose power at the same time. When the power comes back on, however, the terminal resets itself faster than the computer. (The computer has to go through a much longer and more complex start-up procedure.) So if the terminal needs the host computer in order to boot, the reset will fail and your terminal will leave you with some indecipherable error messages.

  Rebooting the terminal when the host computer is up and running again will restore the terminal to a working state.

• If your screen shows gibberish, this could have several causes.

  ASCII terminals sometimes get into weird states because of special control sequences that are sent to them. For example, your terminal might display text in all caps, in reverse video, or in just plain gibberish — e.g., you might press the letter “a” and see “^]c4d.” Or you ...