Virtual consoles switching does not work

Thanks rpkemp for bringing this up. Just yesterday I was loading other window managers on my laptop so I had opportunity to switch virtual consoles for testing purposes. I noticed the same thing as you did, but suspected that it might have been from my playing around. I think I might be able to confirm that this is a bug.

Let me offer a "work around" and this might also isolate what the real problem is. (Also, my laptop's not running at the moment, so some of the description is from memory).

Log in to your initial virtual console (the one on ctrl+alt+f7) and make sure everything's stable. Then, go to the empty spot on your desktop, right-click and choose "Switch User". Choose to start a new session without locking the current session. What SHOULD happen is you would be taken to a new, initially black, blank, login screen right. But instead the screen blanks and then you're back to your original screen right? If so, press ctrl+alt+f8 anyway. You should now be staring at the "login" screen and be able to log in as usual. Can you please confirm this?

On the other hand, your issues with the "regular consoles" (ctrl+alt+f1 to f6) sounds like a definite keyboard mapping issue. Is it possible to switch your keyboard to a US mapping without much difficulty to see what happens?

Later today, I will be reloading some OS stuff from a backup since I may have messed other things up from my "playing". At that time, I should be able to test my virtual consoles too.

Let me know if you find out anything more

Jon

Hi. Unfortunately (?) I'm back home from work now so can't fiddle around with the laptop at the moment. I will do so tomorrow and report back.

What I can say is that before I left work I temporarily swapped the SimplyMepis xorg.conf file for the xorg.conf file from an earlier Kubuntu installation on the same laptop. That solved the problem, and also an issue I'd been having where the usb mouse and the Synaptics touchpad weren't recognized at the same time. So there is presumably some problem with the way the xorg.conf file is generated. I'll compare the two files systematically and post back the results. (Don't think I'm going to get much work done tomorrow!!)

Rob

Hi Rob,

I have started up my laptop and been able to partially confirm the problem. I had to restore my OS (6.0-1) because of playing around with the automatix system loader. I have definitely found some weird stuff!

I have no other desktop environments but KDE. I do, however, have a few different browsers: firefox, opera, konqueror, to name the main ones.

I logged in regularly, then right-clicked on the desktop, chose "Start new session", then clicked the "Start New Session" button on the warning screen (yes, I REALLY DO want to start a new session). The screen blanks for a second and returns me to the "original" (ctrl+alt+f7) screen. If I then press ctrl+alt+f8 I am taken to a login screen. When I enter my login name and password I am immediately taken to an Opera screen. Not Opera running on my desktop, but Opera all by itself. I have to use File -> Exit to quit from Opera. Then, and only then, does the KDE desktop continue to load! I log out of that session. And then "mark for complete removal" Opera. If I then start a new session, I am taken to KDE (but not without first having to press ctrl+alt+f8).

The version of Opera, BTW is 9.02-20060919.6 (unstable). The repository I'm using is

deb http://deb.opera.com/opera testing non-free

Update: I did a quick search on the 'net to see what other repositories I could use for Opera. I have changed my /etc/apt/sources.list to point to the following Opera repository:

deb http://deb.opera.com/opera unstable non-free

But that is not the important thing. You can use either "unstable" or "testing" as the distribution. I completely uninstalled the regular, dynamic version of Opera (9.02-20060916.6) and installed opera-static (version 9.02-20060919.1). This eliminated the problem of Opera popping up during a switch user.

I will be curious to see what you find out about your xorg.conf comparison Rob

Jon

Back at work now and able to get at the machine again, it's quickly become clear what the problem with the virtual (text) consoles was. Here are the salient extracts from the two xorg.conf files I tried:

From working Kubuntu xorg.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "gb"
EndSection

From broken SimplyMepis 6.0 xorg.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "uk"
Option "XKbOptions" ""
EndSection

The significant thing seems to be Mepis's XkbLayout variable, uk rather than Kubuntu's gb. When I change the Mepis xorg.conf file to use gb rather than uk, the problem goes away and I can switch between consoles normally.

To answer your questions, Jon:

1. Yes, with the system set to us keyboard layout there is no problem.

2. No, I don't have the problem with switching between graphical sessions, e.g. F7 to F8, and the "switch user" menu item seems to work as it should.

I also haven't experienced that issue with Opera, although I do have Opera installed. (In fact I too experimented with automatix but when it seemed to get a bit tetchy I stopped experimenting and just downloaded Opera from the Opera website.)

To conclude my little piece of the puzzle, it seems that the root of the problem is that the SimplyMepis configuration utility sets the keyboard layout identifier to "uk" when it should (for my laptop, anyway) be "gb". (This happens both on the initial installation and when reconfiguring the system using Menu --> System Configuration --> System Administration --> Mepis System Tweaks --> Keyboard Layout.) The solution is either to simply alter "uk" in /etc/X11/xorg.conf to "gb", or to run the command "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" (as root, in text mode) and specify the correct keyboard layout.

I don't know whether this is a problem that has been addressed in the updated version of SimplyMepis (I'm using 6.0 from a magazine cover disk). Is there somewhere to check out bugs/file a bug report?

Thanks

Rob

Thanks Rob for the info. What a difference two letters make

When I start my laptop up a little later I shall check the same section and see if there might be a similar problem on my end.

Regarding automatix. I read a number of good things about it, and chose to use it so that I could load lots of things in one go. Well lots of things went alright

I didn't need automatix for loading Opera; I already had it on my system. That one seems to be a specific Opera bug. I hadn't seen the negative interaction with "switch user" because I had not yet tried it. As far as other applications though, I think I'll do them manually instead of relying upon automatix.

From my end, it almost looks like a timing issue. Upon executing "switch user", after being "reminded" of what I'm about to do, the screen does, in fact, try to switch, but then falls back. But in going over to the session where things should be happening (ctrl+alt+f8), things are indeed happening. So is "switch user" moving too fast, and not seeing any activity on f8, switches back? Or is it moving too slow, and activity on f8 has progressed too far to "connect" to it?

I don't know yet. I will see too if I have a similar response in a brand new install into a virtual machine. That will help me to isolate whether it might be hardware specific.

Jon