Terminal emulators suddenly become unresponsive to all input at random

ScurvyBC · 2022-03-24 16:38:43

Hello,

Recently, since migrating my old home directory to a new Arch installation on an SSD, I've run into a problem where my terminal emulator will freeze completely. It can't be closed normally, only via the killall command can I get rid of the unresponsive window.

I'm using dwm and st, though I've tested it with alacritty as well and that also freezes, so it's not a matter of which emulator I'm using. Someone else seems to have had the exact same problem, in this forum post: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=273880. The user there solved it by removing some things from his .bashrc. That'd make sense, but my .bashrc is completely default sans the inclusion of .bash_aliases. I've also tried using zsh instead of bash, and the freezing issue persists.

I can't think of any way to really recreate the issue, since it happens so randomly. The terminal most often freezes when I'm typing in a pacman command or editing a file in vim, but those are my most common uses for the terminal so I can't say if there's any connection between those actions and the freezing.

I never ran into this problem before reinstalling Arch. I can't understand what's causing it and I can't think of any way of fixing it besides doing another installation, which I'd like to avoid if possible.

My packages are up to date, of course.

Any help is appreciated. Thank you.

twelveeighty · 2022-03-24 17:27:46

Create a new 'dummy' regular user account without migrating any settings. Do you still have the same issue on that user? If not, start migrating settings one-by-one and see which one breaks it.

ScurvyBC · 2022-03-24 17:50:27

Thanks. So far, on the new account, it's not freezing. I'll slowly start migrating my settings, as you suggested, and if I eventually find out which one caused it I'll report back so nobody else has this problem.

seth · 2022-03-24 19:55:27

typing in a pacman command or editing a file in vim

You're aware of the ctrl+s/ctrl+q flow control shortcuts? Possibly (logically or physically) stuck ctrl modifier?

ScurvyBC · 2022-03-27 19:09:25

I figured it out. It was uim. I was using it to display Japanese text in Vim, but it interfered with input. It did this in other ways besides the terminal; qutebrowser, a browser with vimkey controls, would behave strangely, inserting text even when not in insert mode, before crashing. uim introduced other quirks, like not being able to insert spaces while holding Shift. This was the cause of the terminal freezing. I probably configured uim in some incorrect way.

Arch Linux

#1 2022-03-24 16:38:43

Terminal emulators suddenly become unresponsive to all input at random

#2 2022-03-24 17:27:46

Re: Terminal emulators suddenly become unresponsive to all input at random

#3 2022-03-24 17:50:27

Re: Terminal emulators suddenly become unresponsive to all input at random

#4 2022-03-24 19:55:27

Re: Terminal emulators suddenly become unresponsive to all input at random

#5 2022-03-27 19:09:25

Re: Terminal emulators suddenly become unresponsive to all input at random

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