Re: Ctrl-Alt-F1 does not switch to a text mode console

[Telsa Gwynne <hobbit aloss ukuu org uk>]

[I spoiled your beautiful layout just to keep all the text in
but to have some space in which to reply too. Sorry :) ]

On Tue, Dec 30, 2003 at 12:40:38AM -0500 or thereabouts, Pierre Sarrazin wrote:
> On Nov. 15th, I reported a problem with my GNOME 2.4 desktop where
> Ctrl-Alt-F1 fails to switch to a text mode console.
> I did a few experiments to try to isolate the cause of the problem.
> I created a .xsession file with the following lines and with
> permissions 755 in my home directory:
>     xterm &
>     exec fvwm2
>
> Then I logged in and got a session without GNOME and without Metacity,
> which is the window manager I normally use.  Ctrl-Alt-F1 worked and
> switched to a text console.
> 
> Then I tried running only Metacity:
>     xterm &
>     exec metacity
> 
> Ctrl-Alt-F1 still worked then.  Then I tried running only the
> GNOME Panel:
>     xterm &
>     exec gnome-panel
> 
> Then Ctrl-Alt-F1 did not work.  Am I on the right track?  Could there
> be something in the Panel that intercepts Ctrl-Alt-F1?  Thanks.

There are a _lot_ of keyboard bindings in Gnome. control-alt-tab
to focus the panel, for example (by default, anyway). You can read
http://www.gnome.org/learn/access-guide/latest/index.html and 
spend hours messing about with them :) 

But it would surprise me to find control-alt-F[1-8] allotted 
to anything in Gnome: X knows and uses those already. 

control-alt-F1 switches me back to the first virtual console
here. And I have exactly your combination below:  

> A few version numbers on my system:
>     libgnome-2.4.0-1
>     libgnomeui-2.4.0.1-1
>     gnome-panel-2.4.0-3
>     metacity-2.6.3-1
> This installation is made of Fedora Core 1 RPM packages.

So I don't know what's going on here. I believe whether to
honour control-alt-backspace may be a setting you can configure
in X (XFree86Config at a guess, but I have never done this),
but the control-alt-functionkey thing, I dunno..

Sorry.

Telsa