Have encountered a (rather minor but puzzling and annoying) problem with "less" that I can reproduce on multiple CentOS4 boxes. Only seems to be a problem for a root login on a VC. Here's the scenario:
1) Login as root on a VC. 2) Type "less /etc/printcap" or any other text file. 3) less hangs until Ctrl-C is typed, then displays the file.
If a gzipped file is tried, after the Ctrl-C it warns that the file is binary rather than unzipping and displaying as might be expected. Using "zless <filename>.gz" works OK. Seems to be something to do with lesspipe.sh behavior set up in /etc/profile.d/less.sh...
4) Type "unset LESSOPEN" 5) Now less works with text files without hanging, but without the smart wrapper behavior. (zless still works with .gz files.)
Logging in as a user on a VC there is no problem, and doing "su -" on the VC there is no problem, working in a konsole as a user or root, or doing ssh to another machine as root, no problems - less works as expected, except with a root login on a VC. Can't find anything in Bugzilla and don't recall encountering this on RH-any-version, FC1/2/3, or WBEL3.
A) Can anyone else confirm this? Could be something strange about my root .??* files that have been propagated across machines, but I can't find any problem.
B) Does this happen on RHEL4?
C) If so, could somebody with a RHEL entitlement bugzilla it? If not, this could be a CentOS4-specific bug.
Thanks, Phil