Virtual terminals?

[krishna.murphy]

Does anyone have a clue as to why the virtual terminals that used to be easily accessed on version 5 with ctrl-F1, etc., are not available to me on version 6+?

I've seen others refer to their use, but I can't get to them.

Cheers!
Krishna :mrgreen:

[klaus2008]

I am not sure that I understand your problem, but if I am inside the grahpical desktop environment then I can press CTRL-ALT-F1 in order to get a virtual console with the user root logged in. If I want to return to the graphical desktop environment then I press ALT-F5.

[krishna.murphy]

Yes, I know - that's what's not working. :(

[klaus2008]

Did you write your own /etc/X11/xorg.conf? According to xorg's man page exists an option to disable virtual terminal support (DontVTSwitch). If this option is set to true then you cannot use the virtual terminals while the xserver is running.

[krishna.murphy]

No, my xorg.conf is created freshly on boot, using options (usually):
knoppix xmodule=svga screen=1024x768The resulting file has no "VT" at all. I had a monitor go bad and just developed this strategy for the replacement - but NO system I've ever booted Knoppix 6 on has ever allowed me to switch to another VT. :o

[mecho]

Can you check in your /etc/default/console-setup if the line:
ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-4]" is commented.

This line specifies the number of virtual consoles in the system. I set it to 1-2 to reduce memory usage instead of 1-4. This Ctrl+Alt+F1 to F4.
If it is commented may be that's the reason you are not getting any

[mecho]

There is another config file responsible for the virtual consoles /etc/inittab

The lines that begin with 1:12345, 2:12345, etc represent the virtual consoles. I commented out 3 and 4 and I am not sure which of the 2 config files is making the difference, but you can try both and see for yourself

[krishna.murphy]

There is another config file responsible for the virtual consoles /etc/inittab

The lines that begin with 1:12345, 2:12345, etc represent the virtual consoles. I commented out 3 and 4 and I am not sure which of the 2 config files is making the difference, but you can try both and see for yourself

Well, I don't see any problems, but I'll show what seems relevant. These should be the vanilla default setup choices - I never set them.

inittab:
# The "id" field MUST be the same as the last
# characters of the device (after "tty").
#
# Format:
# <id>:<runlevels>:<action>:<process>
#
# Note that on most Debian systems tty7 is used by the X Window System,
# so if you want to add more getty's go ahead but skip tty7 if you run X.
#

# 1:12345:respawn:/bin/bash -login < /dev/tty1 >/dev/tty1 2>&1
1:12345:respawn:bash -login </dev/tty1 >/dev/tty1 2>&1
2:12345:respawn:bash -login </dev/tty2 >/dev/tty2 2>&1
3:12345:respawn:bash -login </dev/tty3 >/dev/tty3 2>&1
4:12345:respawn:bash -login </dev/tty4 >/dev/tty4 2>&1

# X mode
x0:5:wait:sleep 2
x1:5:respawn:/etc/init.d/knoppix-startx start

console-setup:
# Setup these consoles. Most people do not need to change this.
ACTIVE_CONSOLES="/dev/tty[1-4]":confused:

Cheers anyway!
Krishna :mrgreen:

[mecho]

Nobody really uses virtual consoles, but it does not mean it should not work :-D.
You can try sudo chvt 1 and see what error comes up, then google it for more info. Sorry I could not help more

[krishna.murphy]

Nobody really uses virtual consoles, but it does not mean it should not work :-D.
You can try sudo chvt 1 and see what error comes up, then google it for more info. Sorry I could not help more

I think you're right about it being relatively unimportant; it just kinda bugged me. chvt works nicely, and when in virtual terminal 1 or 2 (text mode), ctrl-alt-F5 works. However, it takes me back to the GUI, where ctrl-alt-F2 (in the LXterm app) produces ;7Q and no "action." Just curious...


Thanks!
Krishna :mrgreen:

[mecho]

May be it's time to close this thread, but it still bugs me :D.
I think you have an issue with you keyboard mappings. There is one way to find out.
Run xev - in terminal and then press and hold the F1 key and see if it registers properly in xev, do the same with CTRL and ALT. I bet you might have to switch to other xkbModel or xkbLayout setting. Also if this is the reason you might find out some other key combination not functioning properly

[mecho]

Easier then this is to run:
xmodmap -pk | egrep '^[ ]+67 '
and you should see XF86_Switch_VT_1 in the output. If that's not the case then definitely
your key mappings are wrong. This would restore Virtual terminal switching, but may create bigger problems
xmodmap -e 'keycode 67 = F1 XF86_Switch_VT_1'

[utu]

@krishna

My laptop has a setting in setup (bios)
that toggles the operation of the function keys. You might
look into this aspect, since you don't seem to be getting
the response you expect from the function keys.

[krishna.murphy]

@krishna

My laptop has a setting in setup (bios)
that toggles the operation of the function keys. You might
look into this aspect, since you don't seem to be getting
the response you expect from the function keys.

Thanks for the thought! I've looked around in the several BIOSs involved (3 machines, I think) and didn't see that kind of functionality. Since it's on multiple machines, I figured it was something others would have seen and reported, perhaps.

Cheers!
Krishna :mrgreen: