Q: I tried to login to my HP-UX system but everything on the screen is UPPERCASE. What happened?
A: This only occurs with a console login and the problem is caused by having the CAPS-LOCK key enabled on the terminal connection. You’ll also see every UPPERCASE letter preceded by a backslash, like this:
Console Login: ROOT
PASSWORD:
LAST SUCCESSFUL LOGIN FOR ROOT: THU NOV 6 08:07:10 EST5EDT 2014
LAST UNSUCCESSFUL LOGIN FOR ROOT: FRI NOV 7 05:26:47 EST5EDT 2014
PLEASE WAIT…CHECKING FOR DISK QUOTAS
To fix this, exit the login shell and turn off the (very annoying) CAPS-LOCK key.
Note: This only occurs with a console port, not an HP-UX network connection.
Background: Unix has a very long history with terminal devices starting with the hardcopy devices such as the teletypewriter or Teletype® machines. The Unix abbreviation is tty and found in device files and terminal commands. The original TTY machines used Baudot code (not ASCII) which is a very limited encoding using just 5 bits for each character. The term baud rate was derived from the Baudot code name. With only 5 bits, there was no room to represent lowercase characters. The original console for Unix systems was typically the model 28 which was only capable of UPPERCASE characters, so the terminal handler still has code to allow for an UPPERCASE-ONLY terminal device.
– See more at: http://serviceitdirect.com/blog/all-caps-login-hp-ux-console#sthash.9rc1mZ8k.dpuf
Tags: HP-UX