Debian/Ubuntu vi keyboard problem, up and down arrows do not work and instead make an A (Up), B (Down), C (Right) or D(Left).

The working solution

(you could also add the set nocompatible to /etc/vim/vimrc to make it system wide-will not be applied until reboot I believe):

echo "set nocompatible" > ~/.vimrc

some suggest entering this in vi but it did not work for me:

:set term=cons25
The arrow keys work but then Home and End produce garbage characters
 

Another similar issue with i and a for input may come up in newer versions of vi in Debian/Ubuntu and it is also fixed with the above solution.

>4;2m

echo "set nocompatible" > ~/.vimrc

The above issue may also be a sign that you don't have any proper environment variables set (possibly because you operating non-standard such as a chroot).

If you feel your vimrc is being ignored you can run vi like this by manually specifying the vimrc file with -u: 

vi -u /root/.vimrc somefiletoedit

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