macos - Missing the first character of a line on full screen apps on Linux server ssh'ed from OS X Terminal

I am having problems with the Terminal application on Mac OS X Snow Leopard.

I use ssh to connect to a remote Linux server and perform configuration file editing.

For some reason, it sometimes misses characters when it's connected to the Linux server. I have had problems pinpointing this and making it happen in a repeatable manner - unfortunately this is the best method I have come up with it:

1. Connect to Ubuntu 8.04 server




2. Edit some text file with nano (full screen app)




3. The first line of the text file is missing the first character of the line (the leftmost character). E.g. if the text file contains line "asdf" you'll see "sdf".




4. If you move the cursor to this position the character will be back there (the line is redrawn by nano)




5. Resizing the Terminal app window does not bring back any characters




6. If you hit refresh (CTRL+L) in nano the characters will be lost again

The same problem can be observed with less and some other terminal apps.

The problem is not repeatable with the Gnome terminal or other terminal application, so it cannot be related to the server configuration. However, I have the same problem on two different OS X installations, so it might be linked to my default settings.

I suspect this might be related to UTF-8 encoding or Terminal settings somehow, but I have not yet managed to figure out which setting triggers it.

The used ssh client is:

 OpenSSH_5.2p1, OpenSSL 0.9.8r 8 Feb 2011

Edit:

This is actually repeatable on local OSX too and not tied to Ubuntu.

Installed Macports (not sure if needed) and using the following GNU nano to edit text files::

GNU nano version 2.0.6 (compiled 11:42:28, May 18 2009)
Email: nano@nano-editor.org Web: http://www.nano-editor.org/
Compiled options: --disable-nls --enable-color --enable-extra --enable-multibuffer --enable-nanorc

The following terminal related environment variables are set:

    TERM=ansi
    TERM_PROGRAM=Apple_Terminal
    TERM_PROGRAM_VERSION=273.1

In Terminal.app it says the emulation is ansi and encoding UTF-8.

Not stil sure which is the triggering combiation (which Terminal mode, etc.)

Answer

Looks like Terminal is just buggy.

I recommend using iTerm 2 instead.

iTerm2 is a replacement for Terminal and the successor to iTerm. It works on Macs with Leopard, Snow Leopard, or Lion. Its focus is on performance, internationalization, and supporting innovative features that make your life better.