Command line auto complete tab key not work in terminal for Ubuntu

Question

I am runing Ubuntu 13.10. When I remote login through remote desktop and using the terminal, I can not use the tab key to auto complete the command for item such as file/directory. The remote window manager is xfce, and the termial shell is bash.

If I access the same box using SSH, I can use tab key to auto complete.

What is the key for auto complete command for the terminal emulator in xfce window? The regular tab key does not work.

Answer 1

I had this problem using XFCE and TigerVNC: pressing tab just switched between the terminals I had open. It was solved by following the directions given in the link @Jonas provided: http://how-to.cc/fix-bash-command-line-completion. I will copy a few pieces in here in case the link should ever be broken.

Step 1:

Make sure that your .bashrc file contains something like

if [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then     . /etc/bash_completion fi 

so that a file containing bash completion info is actually sourced. In my case, /etc/bash_completion pointed to /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion which contained the stuff to set up. For reference, the end of my .bashrc looked like this:

if ! shopt -oq posix; then   if [ -f /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion ]; then     . /usr/share/bash-completion/bash_completion   elif [ -f /etc/bash_completion ]; then     . /etc/bash_completion   fi fi 

Step 2:

Disable the behaviour of tab changing windows. This is done in the file ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml by changing the line

<property name="&lt;Super&gt;Tab" type="string" value="switch_window_key"/> 

to

<property name="&lt;Super&gt;Tab" type="empty"/> 

Step 3:

Reboot or restart your VNC server (XFCE).