Sorry thats not what you were looking for
No need to be sorry. It still was worth referring to it as someone might find it suiting. Thanks for mentioning it.
I think I will give up on this issue. Where ever I dig, I only find more rock. When ever I try to move around a tree, I run into the next one. Here are the last results/issues. Maybe someone finds them useful:
- I installed xbindkeys (
see here). I want to use that anyway and it can be used to get a workaround for Ctrl+Alt+F1 going.
- There is a strange issue when using "xbindkeys -k" (or "-mk"), which is used to show key-combinations: The return-button that I press for entering the command into a shell, is directly shown as keycombination. That's not a great issue. But on my GentooPC this is not the case. So this is again suspicious to me, that something is not 100% correct with the keymapping in Xorg.
- There is a program to send keystrokes to X named "xdotool". For example I can send the character "a", by writing "xdotool key a". I used this for testing the key to switch to the VT by running "xdotool key XF86_Switch_VT_1". I also tried other numbers. But there is some strange inconsistency. Sometimes switching to the VT works, sometimes it doesn't. It seems like the "XF86_Switch_VT_?" (with ? being any digit) that i configured to F1 (or F2) by using xmodmap does not work. As soon as I remove that assigning, it works (better). Still sometimes sending the key does not work. You should be able to reproduce this when quickly trying various versions of this command. This might also be related to the next issue.
- For some a workaround related to "Shift+BackSpace" I tried to combine xbindkeys and xdotools. I bound "xdotools key Delete" to "Shift+BackSpace". It does work, BUT only if i quickly press Shift+BackSpace at least two times. This is not useful the way it is.
- Can't remember other issues right now, but to be honest I tried so much that I got confused or lost the overview more than once.
I still can only assume what might be causing this:
One theory I have is related to the fact, that the keys of the Pandora are separated into two different input-devices. One part is related to "gpio-keys" and one to "keypad" (see
Wiki. For X11 they are not directly configured, but handled through HAL (process "hald") and the evdev-driver. You can partially see this in "/var/log/Xorg.0.log". Maybe something get's confused because two input-devices are being used in a way they should not be used ( maybe because either the keymapping is not precise or because both are configured as core-input-device). I'm not sure.
The second theory of mine is (and I already wrote that) that something about the Xorg-installation of the PandoraOS is incorrect. Either some missing, depended package or a missing folder/file (like keymap-files). Or some old and new package-version is mixed which are incompatible.
But that's all just an assumption. I never manage to clearly understand all that xorg-configuring. Long ago it all was configured in xorg.conf, then through HAL, now on my GentooPC HAL is not being used anymore but AFAIK handled somehow by the use of udev. The complete keymap-mechanism is a topic of it's own. And once you get it going you do not touch it for months and can't remember too much about what you did when you run into issues again.
Last but not least here is my recommendation for switching to the VT:
- install xbindkeys
- configure xbindkeys to assign "sudo chvt 1" to "Ctrl + Alt + 1" (not F1)
- make sure that "/usr/bin/chvt" is listed in "/etc/sudoers.d/50_openpandora". This might be by default. But maybe I add it on my own. To edit the file you have to be root and change the rights of the file from read-only to read-write. Make sure to set it to "read-only" again after editing it or it will be ignored.
For me switching to VT works nicely that way. Although I don't know if it's of any help if a fullscreen-application hangs. And in case you wonder: You can get back to X by holding Alt+dpad-left/right.
