Terminator 1.91 terminal emulator overwrites existing output in Ubuntu 18.04

Question

Seemingly randomly, when sending a SIGSTOP to vim, my (Terminator 1.91) terminal output breaks. Instead of adding lines to the bottom of the display, it overwrites existing lines. Sometimes it will go away by going back to vim and SIGSTOP ping it again, sometimes I have to use the reset command. This doesn't happen every time I SIGSTOP, and I don't know how to trigger it consistently.

This is what it looks like:

Also seemingly randomly, the jest JavaScript test runner will stop registering keystrokes. When running jest, you have the option of pressing hot keys to trigger actions. When that works, it clears the screen and executes the action. But with my broken terminal, it will sometimes write the keys I pressed into the output and not take any action anymore. Using a new terminal window will sometimes fix it for a while (in the new window only, have to close the old one), and sometimes not.

This is what that looks like:

The jest problem also occurs with rxvt-unicode and urxvt. I couldn't verify the vim issue because I don't know how to trigger it.

The vim issue also happened on OS X using iTerm and previous version of Ubuntu. I started using jest again recently so I only saw it happen on 18.04.

My regular terminal emulator is Terminator v1.91, running on Ubuntu 18.04, with i3-wm as the window manager.

Answer 1

vim and the other graphic editors that run in the command-line window change your "TTY settings" to make their grphics easier for them, fully intending to change them back when they exit. When you stop them with SIGSTOP they don't get to restore the "TTY settings". Read man stty.

Commands that will help:

stty sane
stty echo