Common Issues

Terminal

“I’m stuck in Nano!”

There’s a handy reminder at the bottom of the window - Control-X allows you to exit Nano. The ^ symbol represents “Hold Control and press the following key”.

“I can’t copy-paste in the terminal!”

Different systems and even different terminal programs within those systems can take copy-paste differently. If Control-C and Control-V don’t work, there’s a few options to try:

• Copy:
  • Control-Shift-C.
  • Click and drag with the mouse to select text to copy.
  • Click and drag with the mouse to select text, then right-click and select “Copy”.
• Paste:
  • Control-Shift-V.
  • Click to put the cursor in the right location, then right-click to paste.
  • Click to put the cursor in the right location, then right-click and select “Paste”.

“I ran a command and I’m stuck in the output!”

If their output’s too long to show in one go, some programs (not just Git) will let you scroll through it - you should see a : at the bottom of the page.

Up Arrow and Down Arrow will let you go through the output, and Q will exit.

“I ran a command and it’s just showing > ”

You might have failed to finish a quote, e.g. git commit -m "My message. Try Control-C to quit the command, or you could enter " and then hit enter.