[Solved] latest dnf update puts space after every character in gnome-terminal

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Clovis_Sangrail
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Joined: 2016/04/19 23:19:36

[Solved] latest dnf update puts space after every character in gnome-terminal

Post by Clovis_Sangrail » 2022/12/10 03:54:57

I'm running Centos 9 Stream on a Dell Inspiron 15 3000 laptop.

I just reinstalled from USB stick that is several months old. It loaded the 5.14.0-30 kernel, and I was able to then log in and run terminal windows and firefox normally.

I then ran "dnf update" in a terminal window as root, updating to the 5.14.0-205 kernel:

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[c@stream1 ~]$ uname -a
Linux stream1 5.14.0-205.el9.x86_64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Fri Dec 2 09:29:32 UTC 2022 x86_64 x86_64 x86_64 GNU/Linux
[c@stream1 ~]$ 
Aside from logging in and out a few times, that's all I did. Now all my terminal windows look like this, for example:

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[c @ s t r e a m 1   . s s h ] $  l s  -l
t o t a l   3 6
- r w - - - - - - - .   1   c   c       3 8 8   D e c     9   2 0 : 4 0   a u t h o r i z e d _ k e y s
- r w - - - - - - - .   1   c   c     2 6 0 2   D e c     9   2 0 : 4 0   i d _ r s a
- r w - - - - - - - .   1   c   c       5 6 6   D e c     9   2 0 : 4 0   i d _ r s a . p u b
- r w - - - - - - - .   1   c   c     2 4 7 8   D e c     9   2 1 : 2 1   k n o w n _ h o s t s 
[ c @ s t r e a m 1  . s s h ] $ 
Gnome paints my 24x80 terminal with 160 characters worth of width, and echoes an extra space after every character in it. It is specific to the display of the terminal window. If I cut/paste the window contents into a file and copy it to another computer, there are no extra spaces. If I ssh into my laptop from another computer and run the same 'ls' command, there again are no extra spaces.

I see that gnome configuration isn't stored in human-readable text files, they're instead in a windows-registry-like database managed by the "dconf" program. How lovely.

Has anybody else encountered this? Is there a 'character echo' setting of some kind, into which somebody stuck an extra space? Is there any way to fix this?
Last edited by Clovis_Sangrail on 2022/12/12 18:49:13, edited 2 times in total.

E34rrsfff
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Re: latest dnf update puts space after every character in gnome-terminal

Post by E34rrsfff » 2022/12/12 02:54:03

The terminal usually looks like that if you're not using a monospaced font. It's just how the terminal renders text. Try changing the font in your terminal settings to a monospaced one.

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TrevorH
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Re: latest dnf update puts space after every character in gnome-terminal

Post by TrevorH » 2022/12/12 10:44:27

No, it really doesn't. I don't know what the problem is buit it isn't font related.
The future appears to be RHEL or Debian. I think I'm going Debian.
Info for USB installs on http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/InstallFromUSBkey
CentOS 5 and 6 are deadest, do not use them.
Use the FAQ Luke

Clovis_Sangrail
Posts: 25
Joined: 2016/04/19 23:19:36

Re: latest dnf update puts space after every character in gnome-terminal

Post by Clovis_Sangrail » 2022/12/12 18:44:46

"The terminal usually looks like that if you're not using a monospaced font. It's just how the terminal renders text. Try changing the font in your terminal settings to a monospaced one."

I did not know how to change a terminal font, and google led me to these instructions:

https://help.gnome.org/users/gnome-term ... ts.html.en

It turns out that you can also see the same instructions via the terminal "help" facility. More than the instructions about setting a custom font, I was excited to see the character and line spacing section. It sounded like what I needed.

In trying to follow those instructions, I found that I could not advance any further than clicking on "Preferences", and then I had to create a filename for my own custom profile before I could see any of the "Profiles" settings. After I picked out a name (mine), then I had two selections to choose from under the "Profiles" heading, "clovis" and "Unnamed". Under "clovis", the width and height spacing were both already at 1.00. The "Custom Font" box was unchecked, but the (presumably default?) selection was already "monospace".

I checked the custom font box, clicked on the rectangle, and in the resulting pop-up I clicked on the "monospace" selection that had been the default.

Afterwards, I was able to open new terminal windows with the correct spacing. When I later chose the "Unnamed" selection under the preferences the "custom font" box was already checked. I don't think I did that.

So, it's fixed! before checking the "Custom Font" box maybe the terminal didn't have any font to use? Anyway, I hope it doesn't break again.

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