mjhjmtu

I have seen such problems before.

Take the backspace for example, the remote host expects some character to be used as "erase/backspace" , while you pressing backspace in the terminal , the terminal program will send some character to the remote host, if what the remote host expects diffs with the characters sent by the terminal program, you would encounter this issue. So a quick fix is as below:

1. run command #stty -a in the remote host, and find what is expected to be an erase code in the output. Say erase=^?.


2. In the terminal, type Ctrlv and press your backspace. You'll see what code is sent as "erase". Say it is ^H.


3. In the remote host, run #stty erase ^H.
   (Note: use Ctrlv + Backspace, do not type the ^ manually)

You can fix the Tab issue with the same as above.

Beside "stty" solution, you may try the "TERM" solution.

You ssh to your Debian from some terminal (putty, solaris dterm, debain xterm, you-name-it), this termninal announce capabilities (which includes keys such as Backspace and Tab) via TERM environment variable.

So, after ssh to unix host (it doesn't depend debian it or other host) set the TERM variable according to your terminal. Consider you're using bash as shell and vt100 as terminal:

export TERM=vt100

ps: TERM should be announced via ssh automagically, but in some circumstances this magic fails.

This is because your default shell is sh, to use bash, just run bash from your shell.

bash

To set bash as your default shell:

chsh -s /bin/bash 

or

sudo chsh -s /bin/bash yourusername

Your shell may be set to /bin/sh instead of /bin/bash

I usually use this to fix any funky character output in my terminal. It resets all the special characters to their default values.

stty sane

From the stty man page:

same as cread -ignbrk brkint -inlcr -igncr icrnl -iutf8 -ixoff -iuclc -ixany imaxbel opost -olcuc -ocrnl onlcr -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel nl0 cr0 tab0 bs0 vt0 ff0 isig icanon iexten echo echoe echok -echonl -noflsh -xcase -tostop -echoprt echoctl echoke, all special characters to their default values

on top of paul's answer, if you want to retain the ability to have colorful output, you can use xterm-88color

echo 'export TERM=xterm-88color' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

# stty -a
speed 38400 baud; rows 34; columns 134; line = 0;
intr = ^C; quit = ^; erase = ^H; kill = ^U; eof = ^D; eol = <undef>; eol2 = 
<undef>; swtch = <undef>; start = ^Q; stop = ^S;
susp = ^Z; rprnt = ^R; werase = ^W; lnext = ^V; flush = ^O; min = 1; time = 0;
-parenb -parodd cs8 -hupcl -cstopb cread -clocal -crtscts
-ignbrk brkint -ignpar -parmrk -inpck -istrip -inlcr -igncr icrnl ixon -ixoff - 
iuclc -ixany imaxbel -iutf8
opost -olcuc -ocrnl onlcr -onocr -onlret -ofill -ofdel nl0 cr0 tab0 bs0 vt0 ff0
isig icanon iexten echo echoe echok -echonl -noflsh -xcase -tostop -echoprt echoctl 
echoke

My home key prints a ^[[1~, as per @Derui Si's solution my backspace key is working fine not sure what to do for home key.