Emacs Ctrl-x ctrl-s command not working in Terminal.app

I am having issue when connecting to my school's unix remotely via Terminal (SSH) and attempting to edit code in emacs on my Mac. I have a Macbook Pro running Mac OS 10.6.

I use the emacs that is installed on their Unix operating system (not emacs installed locally on my Mac). I made sure that Terminal is running vt100 emulation, as that is the setting that I was told to run it at.

Everything works fine except for some keyboard behavior issues. When I attempt to save in emacs (Ctrl-x Ctrl-s), it doesn't seem to accept it and and makes the "bump" error noise, as in bad input. However, when I attempt to do this on another Mac (with a full keyboard), the save command works fine. It also works fine when I am running a virtual installation of Ubuntu on my Mac laptop. And when I use a Windows machine, running PuTTY, the save command works fine. So I am thinking it has something to do with my Mac's keyboard (since it is a laptop keyboard, and not the full keyboard)? Or is there a setting that may be wrong?

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Solution 1:

I just ran into what I think is the same problem when trying to use Ctrl-S under Vim in Terminal.app. I found a related tip indicating that by default, Terminal.app reserves Ctrl-S for old-fashioned XON/XOFF flow control. Adding this line to my .bash_profile -- or just entering it at the prompt -- freed up Ctrl-S and Ctrl-Q for use with Vim:

stty -ixon -ixoff

Solution 2:

Is it possible that you have a global shortcut associated to the key sequence Ctrl + S ? Such a shortcut would get the sequence before it is sent to the Terminal and it would explain why it doesn't work with Term.app and iTerm2.app.

You can check for registered shortcuts in System Preferences, Keyboard, Keyboard shortcuts. You can also revert them to the default if you think you never changed them.