[sclug] lost termninals

[Spiros Kapetanakis]

On 27/02/06, ed <ed at ednevitible.co.uk> wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Feb 2006 14:38:15 +0000
> "Spiros Kapetanakis" <spizkapa at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > a weird thing just happened to my Ubuntu Linux box. The Ctrl-Alt-F1 to
> > F6 key combo no longer takes me to another virtual terminal. It just
> > sits there... It's as if I had no more terminals started but I haven't
> > changed anything.
> >
> > I checked that there are no keyboard shortcuts overiding the
> > combination but then, I'm out of ideas. There used to be a /etc/ttys
> > file on other linux distros but not on Ubuntu.
> >
> > Any ideas? Many thanks.
>
> Does /etc/inttab contain:
>
> 1:2345:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty1
> 2:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty2
> 3:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty3
> 4:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty4
> 5:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty5
> 6:23:respawn:/sbin/getty 38400 tty6

Yes, inittab does contain these lines.

> Does ctrl-alt-f8 take you to a blank screen with a cursor blinking? If
> so, hit alt-[right arrow] a few times, if you're lucky you will find a
> console.
No, ctrl-alt-f8 doesn't take me anywhere.

I guess I should also mention that the system in question in a HP
nx9010 laptop running with a Dell keyboard through a KVM switch. I'm
sure this has worked in the past so I'm not quite certain why it
stopped. The only change I've made is to set the keyboard layout to
UK.

I'm suspecting that the ctl-alt-f* cobinations are not producing the
right keycodes but I can't remember of an application that can grab
keycodes. There was one I used to use but it's a long time ago.

Is there a way to switch between virtual terminals from the command-line?

Spiros