Display all 3396 possibilities? [Q. answered]

[wharfhouse]

Hi Guys,

Making an up-to-date LiveCD last night, after giving the command umount -a the display blacked out with garbled bits of sentences and symbols spread all over it.  Seen this once before a long time ago but can't remember the circumstances (wasn't making a live CD).  Anyway, pressed a few buttons to get a desktop back and I think it was Ctrl+Alt+ Del that did the trick, but in the root terminal window on my desktop I was working in, the output after 'umount -a' said Display all 3396 possibilities? (y or n).
I pressed no as I don't know what it means, and carried on to successfully produce a LiveCD.

Question is out of interest, although on this occasion it was no big deal, does anybody know what all this means?  

[TerryN]

The Display all xxxx possibilities? (y or n) message comes from the bash shell's TAB completion feature.  This feature saves you from having to type out commands and pathnames in full at the command line.  The idea is you just enter enough characters to uniquely identify the command you want and press TAB.

For example: if you wanted to execute the draknetcenter command, you can just type drakn at the prompt and then press TAB

Code: [Select]

[terry@localhost ~]$ drakn
draknetcenter   draknetprofile  draknfs
[terry@localhost ~]$ drakn

If you don't enter enough characters to uniquely identify the command the shell shows you the possibilites based on what you have entered.  In our example there are 3 possibilities for the command.  Continue by typing etc and press TAB again and you will see the command is completed for you.

It works for file/directory paths too.  If you want to change directory to /etc/ndiswrapper, you only have to type cd /etc/nd and press TAB

Back to your original question.  If you just hit TAB without entering any characters you are asking the shell to show you ALL the possible commands. It is asking you confirm that is what you intended.

Hope that helps
Terry.

[wharfhouse]

Hi TerryN... don't think we've met before 

Thanks for the expanation, certainly explains the "Display all 3396 possibilities?" output in the shell terminal, but what I don't understand, is why it was subsequent to the screen blacking out with garbled stuff spread all over it after the umount -a  
 

[YouCanToo]

Hey warfhouse, When using colors to display keywords or something that you want to highlight, try not to use Yellow.  If you look at your original post you will see the part about " umount -a " is next to impossible to read for some of use older guys 

[kjpetrie]

Either one of the garbled characters was a TAB that found its way into the keyboard buffer, or one of the keys you pressed intentionally or unintentionally while trying to restart X was TAB or a key combination equivalent to TAB.

[wharfhouse]

Hey warfhouse, When using colors to display keywords or something that you want to highlight, try not to use Yellow.  If you look at your original post you will see the part about " umount -a " is next to impossible to read for some of use older guys 

Sorry YouCanToo... I'll remember that    (Hey I'm quietly heading in that direction too  )

Either one of the garbled characters was a TAB that found its way into the keyboard buffer, or one of the keys you pressed intentionally or unintentionally while trying to restart X was TAB or a key combination equivalent to TAB.

Thanks Mr. Petrie, I take it that it's just one of those glitches that sometimes happens then 

In that case... NFA 

[Tony]

To run "umount -a" I have to first become root, "su" or it doesn't work. Using Minime.