Wuff —- Wuff!! from Mac OS X to a Screen Session on Linux

If you use OS X, and manage multiple machines over SSH, you’ve probably come across and used screen.

You may have noticed that if you SSH to a Linux host from Mac OS X, and try to use the backspace or tab key within a screen session, that you get the “Wuff —- Wuff!!” prompt at the bottom.

Thankfully, the resolution to this problem is easy.

On the remote machine, if you open your ~/.bash_profile file in a text editor (.bash_profile in your home directory), you need to add the following line:

alias screen='TERM=screen screen'

Add that, save the file and you’re done!  You’ll need to re-run bash or just log out and log back in, but when you do, the next screen session you open, you’ll find that the backspace/tab key works again as expected!

One reply on “Wuff —- Wuff!! from Mac OS X to a Screen Session on Linux”

  1. Thanks for posting this. I tried using the above alias and then my backspace stopped working so I was getting all kinds of strange backspace characters like Preferences
    # Declare terminal type ($TERM) as: rxvt

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