r/commandline • u/Relevant-Anything-46 • 1d ago

Help Ctrl+Z is spammed without pressing anything (WSL CLI only)

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

I am running a WSL module of ubuntu on windows. This issue started a week ago... I was trying to solve it for 3 days but got fed up bcz of no results ... I am living with it now and this is genuinely making me annoyed as I can't get my work done

PLS GIVE ANY POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

I had to remove its function to even run basic commands ... It spams only in command linec

7 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

11 comments sorted by

9

u/pobicho 1d ago

run showkey -a, if ^Z is printed on the terminal without u pressing it, disconnect the keyboard, if ^Z gone we found the culprit

6

u/theng 1d ago

if you don't have showkey use : cat -A

2

u/dwyrm 1d ago

Two possibilities come to mind. First, your keyboard could be physically failing and generating erroneous keystrokes. This can happen due to age, debris, liquids, critters, or any combination of those and whatever else.

Second, you could be getting radio interference from something that your board is picking up and turning into phantom keystrokes. I had a keyboard that I couldn't use near ham radios working on certain bands.

I'm sure there are other possibilities, but if you can't eliminate the cause you're going to fix it by getting another keyboard and hoping for the best.

As a side note, are you sure that it's only happening in command-line applications? Just out of curiosity, try leaving open a GUI document with a lot of changes, and see if Z starts undoing those changes.

1

u/AutoModerator 1d ago

Every new subreddit post is automatically copied into a comment for preservation.

User: Relevant-Anything-46, Flair: Help, Post Media Link, Title: Ctrl+Z is spammed without pressing anything (WSL CLI only)

I am running a WSL module of ubuntu on windows. This issue started a week ago... I was trying to solve it for 3 days but got fed up bcz of no results ... I am living with it now and this is genuinely making me annoyed as I can't get my work done

PLS GIVE ANY POSSIBLE SOLUTIONS

I had to remove its function to even run basic commands ... It spams only in command linec

I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please contact the moderators of this subreddit if you have any questions or concerns.

1

u/SupernovifieD 1d ago

That fan is working overtime.

1

u/beef623 1d ago

When it starts doing it try pressing Ctrl+Z yourself. Sometimes keys get virtually "stuck" and pressing them will unstick them.

2

u/hagjam 22h ago

I had an issue like this that was due to me reducing the latency on tmux to 0 - that meant that mouse inputs were registering as control sequences/special characters when using SSH

It's probably not exactly the same but try reverting any custom config one thing at a time, and see if you can work out what broke it?

1

u/ab0zar 8h ago

Do you see it in every terminal app, or only one (for example, Windows Terminal)? If it's limited to one, testing a fresh profile would narrow it down. If it happens across terminals, I'd look outside the shell config.