Debian (Ubuntu) question - CTL-ALT-Fn to switch consoles

Bill Campbell linux-sxs
Sat Jun 10 12:36:43 PDT 2006


On Sat, Jun 10, 2006, Collins Richey wrote:
>Although I use the CTL-ALT-Fn function to switch to another console at
>work regularly (RHEL & RH9 systems), I hadn't needed to do this at
>home for a long time, and to my surprise it does not work well on
>Kubuntu 6.06 (no idea whether it ever worked).
>
>When I switch to a new console, I get the login prompt, but login is
>not possible because the console appears to be ignoring linefeeds.
>When I key my userid, the password prompt appears on the same line,
>and as soon as I start to key a password, the cursor drops to the next
>line and echo suppression disappears (I can see what I'm keying).
>Needless to say, the login does not work.

Instead of pressing return, try ctrl-j.  This may well allow you
to login.  Once you're logged in, try ``stty sane<ctrl-j>'' which
should restore the mapping of the <ENTER> (ctrl-m) key to ctrl-j.

If this works, my guess is that things will return to normal
after logging out from that multi-screen.

>Does this ring a bell with anyone? Is this a known problem on Debian systems?

I don't know about Debian as I don't belong to that religion, but I have
seen similar behaviour on SCO OpenServer systems when something went flakey
in a session.  On OpenServer, the file /etc/ioctl.syscon would be
corrupted, and removing it would restore normal operation.

Bill
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