In message <f88a188547@tonyh.tcp.co.uk>,
     Tony Houghton wrote:

> >
> > What is the value of your TERM variable (echo $TERM)?
> 
> vt100
> 
> I tried putting stty erase "^H" in my .profile, typing the ^ and H
> literally, as advised by Kjetil Thomassen, but what seems to be
> happening now is that the backspace key is removing characters from the
> input buffer as wanted, but it's still coming up ^H on screen instead of
> backspacing the cursor.

I use TERM=vt220 at the console and TERM=xterm under X11. Let me check if
I do any stty stuff in my shell rc files ... No, I don't.

You could try changing TERM to vt220 so see if it makes any difference.
Under X11 the proper method to assign keys to functions is the use of
xmodmap. Please try

   xmodmap -e 'keycode 110 = BackSpace'
   
I'm not sure if I have the syntax correct but you can look it up in the
xmodmap manpage. 

Regards,
   Stefan

-- 
Stefan Voss
(voss@yoda.in-berlin.de)