1. `` shopt -p `` Maybe my hostname completion worked and then stopped working because the bash option hostcomplete was not set. Duh! Why? I don't know. Anyway, `` shopt -s hostcomplete`` solves the problem. `` nocaseglob `` is also pretty cool (case insensitive tab completion) 2. it's really hard to search for readline stuff on google. Can anyone explain to me how BASH readline works? I would REALLY like to make bash readline work like ipython, in which you can start typing a command and hit the 'up' key to search through the history for anything beginning with the stuff you've typed up to that point. But I can't even find documentation for the ipython readline! Any hints, anyone? 3. my desktop at work blocks ssh connections. I can ssh into some computers and then into it, but not directly into it. ...as usual, I made a list where not-a-list would have sufficed, and I had to add the last thing because a 2-item list is dumb.