well, i decided to contribute my .02 to here, here goes: on most linux systems, maybe some other unix systems, there is a command called reset. if your terminal gets messed up (o echoing of commands, etc) or wierd things appear (hard to explain, but really odd things instead of a shell prompt for example), you can type reset at a shell prompt. that usually fixes the problem if it's a terminal issue. i don't know if this hapens on the linux console, but it happens to me on my serial terminal.
