I occasionally run into a problem with a shortcut I press by mistake, which makes my system unusable until I restart. The shortcut is Control + Shift + F12 (default system assignment). Whenever I press that, the screen goes black, I see a flashing console cursor for some seconds, then I’m taken to a console which asks me to login. I write root’s username and password, and I then have a console I can work with a lot like like Bash. However, there’s no way to get out of there any more. I tried the same shortcut and other Control + Shift + F# or Control + Alt + F# shortcuts, but nothing works.
Another odd thing is that I tried debugging this in a virtual machine on VirtualBox (also openSUSE 12.2), but the shortcut does nothing there. So apparently it only exists on my real machine… how come? I tried to look in the KDE settings at the Shortcuts area, but could not find what it’s assigned to.
What does this shortcut do exactly? And when I reach that console, how do I get out and resume to the normal desktop?
Sometimes the keyboard behaves different in the virtual terminals. On some you need to use the Alt instead of the Ctrl, sometimes the Win key instead of the Ctrl. So, try Win-Shift-F7, or Alt-Shift-F7 to get back to the desktop.
> Control + Shift + F12 (default system assignment)
the only default Ctrl+Shift strokes i see in my default install KDE4.6
are Ctrl+Shift+A, Ctrl+Shift+F and Ctrl+Shift+Z
there are no Ctrl+Shift+Fx at all!
i think you have one of these:
a hardware fault
or maybe you have a laptop (?) whose BIOS assigns Ctrl+Shift+F12 to
have a unique action, not at all related to openSUSE
or maybe you have installed and have running a program which
‘watches’ for Ctrl+Shift+F12, this search might help you find what is
going on: http://tinyurl.com/bqlor2u
but, i see that that one has some MS-Windows use of Ctrl+Shift+F12, so i
wonder if maybe you have Windows running in a VM; or are you running
openSUSE in a VM hosted by Windows; or you are running a Windows program
in WINE or CrossOver??
if not, you can save looking at about 80,000 potential causes by
factoring Windows out of the search like here: http://tinyurl.com/cmqlxsx
> Whenever I press that, the
> screen goes black, I see a flashing console cursor for some seconds,
> then I’m taken to a console which asks me to login. I write root’s
> username and password, and I then have a console I can work with a lot
> like like Bash. However, there’s no way to get out of there any more. I
> tried the same shortcut and other Control + Shift + F# or Control + Alt
> + F# shortcuts, but nothing works.
this is all very strange!
> What does this shortcut do exactly?
no idea, i’ve never see it reported before so i guess it is my 1, 2 or 3
above…happy hunting!
The virtual machine is also ran on openSUSE 12.2 (so it’s openSUSE on openSUSE lol). It’s surely not related to a hardware fault, but if it’s not a default openSUSE or KDE shortcut I am wondering how it got there (it’s likely a key to go to some runlevel). If I ever get to that screen again I’ll try key combinations with F7 to see if that fixes it. Thanks.
@ dd: The mistake often happens when I toggle desktop effects. The combination for that is Alt + Shift + F12, and it can be easy to mistaken the two
