Ctrl-e and Ctrl-a not working on Ubuntu Hardy?
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.
If you prefer vi(m), you can do this:
set -o vi
Note, however, that the vi-bindings aren't nearly as complete as the emacs ones.
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.