[sclug] passphrase prompt on VT console

[Darren Davison]

Hi gurus.

Wonder if someone can explain this bizarre behaviour that I've recently
started witnessing on one of my machines.

I login to my machine on a console, then run startx.  Eclipse (an IDE I use)
has plugin support for CVS/SVN repos and many of these I access using ssh
and a public key.  Until today, whenever Eclipse needed the key passphrase,
it just opened a dialog for it and then cached it in memory until shutdown
(it doesn't seem to be ssh-agent aware).

What happens now is that instead of the dialog window opening, the entire X
server and all apps in it become unresponsive to input.  No mouse or
keyboard input causes any kind of response at all, although it can be seen
that all apps are still running normally (panel plugins, clock etc all
function) and the mouse cursor moves.

Switching back to the VT where startx was called, I see a prompt for my SSH
key passphrase - on the console itself.  Typing in the passphrase has no
effect, so it's not actually waiting for input.  Switch back to the X server
and the screen is black - no repaint.

The only thing that's possible at this stage is to hit Ctrl-C at the VT
which of course terminates the startx script and thereby kills my entire X
session.

Anyone come across similar or know how/why this happens??

Help much appreciated!

-- 
Darren Davison
Public Key: 0xDD356B0D
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 191 bytes
Desc: not available
Url : http://lists.tmdg.co.uk/pipermail/sclug/attachments/20060725/b24df362/attachment.bin