I haven't booted into linux in a while,but this week I booted it up, updated most of my software, played with it and tried to reconfigure everything to my liking. However, now I've lost the ability to change virtual terminals using CTRL+ALT+F1/F2/F3 etc. I'm using the latest Fluxbox from git repo. and Xorg-7.2, also using nvidia drivers.

This worked at the beginning of the week until recently when I overhauled most of my software. I also noticed when updating fluxbox that my keybindings no longer worked and had to manually edit the ~/.fluxbox/keys config. This could be the culprit but I couldn't find any documentation on implementing the ability to change virtual terminals.

Hi, welcome to LQ!

Please, do tell us which distro you're using, and what its default
run-level is ...



Cheers,
Tink

Thanks for the welcome! I am using Gentoo with kernel 2.6.30. Not sure what default runlevel is, never had that question come up.

I recently configured Xorg to use HAL and evdev, is this what could have done it?

Installed xbindkeys and configured control+alt+f1 to execute command "chvt 1"

Now I get a blank screen, no text, monitor is not asleep. Alt+F7 puts me back into X windows session.

Now there must be an xorg.conf misconfiguration, anyone have ideas?

Moved: This thread is more suitable in <GENTOO> and has been moved accordingly to help your thread/question get the exposure it deserves.

The fact that the key combos stopped working could be related with the migration to hal/evdev, though I haven't seen it myself. It could also be a fluxbox or xbindkeys binding which is overwriting the default bindings to switch vt.

However, the fact that using chvt you can't see the vt either shouldn't have anything to do with that. That could be related to some graphics driver issue. If you are using a proprietary driver for an nvidia or ati card, make sure that you haven't enabled nvidiafb or radeonfb in your kernel. Or better, disable the framebuffer completely, just to test. You should also test the X logs and make sure that you didn't modify your /etc/inittab in any strange ways.

I previously posted in Gentoo forums:
This didn't work.

I don't know much about framebuffers, what would disabling it do?

It would mean that you would only have an 80x25 characters text console when you are outside X, and you will have no graphics support in the console (the terminals inside X have nothing to do with this, and will continue to work as always). Disabling it is as easy as to take off your video or vga option (or whatever your fb driver uses) from the boot line in your grub.conf. You could just copy the relevant section, and replicate it so you have the option to boot with or without fb enabled, and see if that makes a difference.

This still didn't work. Do you think nvidia's fb is built into the kernel with a higher priority? Even changing to the uvesafb and changing options at boot didn't change the CLI terminal at all. I appreciate your help, though. I'm still snooping around for some info.

PS: Honestly this isn't a big deal, I don't use it that often, but it is helpful sometimes. It is just weird to lose functionality all of a sudden.

I don't think it's about priority, however if nvidiafb is built there could be some incompatibility, even if you don't use it. But I really can't know or guarantee whether that's related to your problem or not. It might be an entirely different issue.

You could also try different versions of the nvidia X driver. The problem could lie in a number of places.