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I use a Mac, so I don't have Home and End keys on my keyboard. I also ssh to Linux servers quite a bit. I've found that when I ssh to an Ubuntu Linux server running Jaunty I can use the readline key-bindings Ctrl-a and Ctrl-e to move the cursor to the beginning or the end of the line, but there are a couple of Hardy servers I often ssh to, and those key-bindings don't work when connecting to them.

I've tried connecting to them from a Linux box instead, just in case it was something to do with the way my Mac Terminal is configured, and I see the same results.

Does anyone have any idea why, and how to fix this?

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Just a thought, but try entering this and retrying the commands:

set -o emacs

If that works, put the setting in your ~/.bashrc file to load it automatically.

I'll admit that I prefer these settings, however:

set -o vi
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Found the answer! /etc/bash.bashrc had set -o vi in it, which for some reason was preventing Ctrl-e and Ctrl-a from working.

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The set -o vi command causes Bash to use Vim bindings. The default is Emacs style bindings. So, it's not "for some reason," but rather that set -o vi invokes a whole different set of Readline options. See my answer for how to switch on the fly. – Telemachus Sep 28 '09 at 16:58
Excellent, thanks. I realised that Bash was being set to use vi bindings, but didn't expect that to prevent Ctrl-a and Ctrl-e from working. I'd not realised that the way to turn-off vi bindings was to set emacs bindings. – Richard Turner Sep 30 '09 at 10:09
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