Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Liam Zwitser]

-- Forwarded message --
From: Liam Zwitser 
Date: Fri, Jan 16, 2009 at 9:40 AM
Subject: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?
To: ubuntu-de...@lists.ubuntu.com


Hello everyone,

In Jaunty alpha 3 you can´t use CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to restart the X-server
anymore. I know that some users complained about restarting the X-server,
but I see a lot more, including yours truly, complaining about the fact that
the shortcut got disabled. I think it's a good idea to create a GUI to set
X-server options, but I assume that most people don´t want to have to
restart their pc when the GUI chrashes. It´s not windows, after all. What I
propose is that people who want to get rid of the shortcut can do so easily
via a simple GUI menu, but that it´s enabled by default.

Yours sincerely,

Liam Zwitser
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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Markus Hitter]

Am 16.01.2009 um 16:58 schrieb Liam Zwitser:

> I assume that most people don´t want to have to
> restart their pc when the GUI chrashes.

I assume most people don't want their GUI to crash at all. That's a  
serious data loss each time, after all.

If your X crashes from time to time that's unfortunate for you, but a  
good thing for Ubuntu as you get the chance to report and track down  
a bug.


MarKus

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/





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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Justin M. Wray]

"If your X crashes from time to time that's unfortunate for you, but a good 
thing for Ubuntu as you get the chance to report and track down a bug."

Come on, are you kidding me?  That attitude towards "user-friendliness" isn't 
going to help Ubuntu at all.  Sorry but a users X issues doesn't "help" Ubuntu.

CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE is a standard for many people. Though it isn't something 
that would normally be used, but when needed saves a lot of time.

But get serious, having to reboot your system isn't going to increase bug 
reports for X crashes.  In fact I'd argue to say people will be less likely to 
file a bug report, due to the added time and aggravation of rebooting the 
system.

Point is, the ability to quickly and easily restart X is an invaluable feature. 
 It seems like a regression to remove such a standardized usage.
--Original Message--
From: Markus Hitter
Sender: ubuntu-devel-discuss-boun...@lists.ubuntu.com
To: Liam Zwitser
Cc: ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
Subject: Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?
Sent: Feb 10, 2009 10:02


Am 16.01.2009 um 16:58 schrieb Liam Zwitser:

> I assume that most people don´t want to have to
> restart their pc when the GUI chrashes.

I assume most people don't want their GUI to crash at all. That's a  
serious data loss each time, after all.

If your X crashes from time to time that's unfortunate for you, but a  
good thing for Ubuntu as you get the chance to report and track down  
a bug.


MarKus

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Dipl. Ing. Markus Hitter
http://www.jump-ing.de/





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RE: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Mike Jones]

Evan,

Now, I didn't know that the Alt-Sysrq-k shortcut existed previously. If
the C-A-B shortcut is being disabled because Alt-Sysrq-k does the exact same
thing with simply a different key combination, then I have no objection at
all to disabling C-A-B. Its true that its easy to hit if your not actively
trying to avoid it.

My objections stemmed from my belief that the only way to access that
feature would be disabled if C-A-B was to be disabled.

In light of that new info, I would say all of my objections are handled
quite nicely by Alt-Sysrq-k.

MIchael Jones
Junior Software Engineering and Computer Science major
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology



>From what I understand, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace isn't the only way to kill X.

Alt-Sysrq-k also works, and is still enabled, as it is significantly less
likely to be hit by accident.

I don't really see what all the fuss is about? People who know what they're
doing can still kill X if necessary, and people who don't know what they're
doing won't accidentally lose all their work when they mis-type. It seems
win-win to me.

Just my two cents,
Evan
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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Remco]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Mike Jones  wrote:
>     In light of that new info, I would say all of my objections are handled
> quite nicely by Alt-Sysrq-k.

I haven't tried it out yet, but I agree that this new A-S-K
combination would be a good replacement. Now we only need to teach
everybody about this. C-A-B was common knowledge.

Remco

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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Mackenzie Morgan]

On Thu, 2009-02-12 at 22:41 +0100, Remco wrote:
> On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Mike Jones  wrote:
> > In light of that new info, I would say all of my objections are handled
> > quite nicely by Alt-Sysrq-k.
> 
> I haven't tried it out yet, but I agree that this new A-S-K
> combination would be a good replacement. Now we only need to teach
> everybody about this. C-A-B was common knowledge.

Except when you don't have a SysRq key.

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apt-get moo


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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Remco]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 11:37 PM, Mackenzie Morgan  wrote:
> On Thu, 2009-02-12 at 22:41 +0100, Remco wrote:
>> On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 10:31 PM, Mike Jones  wrote:
>> >     In light of that new info, I would say all of my objections are handled
>> > quite nicely by Alt-Sysrq-k.
>>
>> I haven't tried it out yet, but I agree that this new A-S-K
>> combination would be a good replacement. Now we only need to teach
>> everybody about this. C-A-B was common knowledge.
>
> Except when you don't have a SysRq key.

Craig Maloney mentioned off-list that Macs don't have a SysRQ key. F13
doesn't seem to work as an alternative either. So we're back at C-A-B.

Remco

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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Felix Miata]

On 2009/02/13 08:31 (GMT-0800) Dylan McCall composed:

> SysRQ doesn't work or don't have the key? That's a bug in the kernel.

No SysRQ key is not a kernel bug.

> ... get a new keyboard.

Nice trick for a laptop user.

Oh, and since laptops have been outselling desktops for several years, it
probably won't be long before laptops in use outnumber desktops in use, if
they don't already.

Release notes probably should direct users to shortly after install, pay a
visit to a virtual console, to see if it's even possible to login there. In
recent releases it's all too possible that that is not the case. Ctrl-Alt-F#
won't do those users any good.
-- 
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mouths, but only what is helpful for building
others up." Ephesians 4:29 NIV

 Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Clive Wagenaar]

On Friday 16 January 2009 15:58:23 Liam Zwitser wrote:
> In Jaunty alpha 3 you can´t use CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to restart the X-server
> anymore. I know that some users complained about restarting the X-server,
> but I see a lot more, including yours truly, complaining about the fact
> that the shortcut got disabled. I think it's a good idea to create a GUI to
> set X-server options, but I assume that most people don´t want to have to
> restart their pc when the GUI chrashes. It´s not windows, after all. What I
> propose is that people who want to get rid of the shortcut can do so easily
> via a simple GUI menu, but that it´s enabled by default.

I agree with this guy, have it on by default, noobs can use GUI to switch it 
off. 

Else, millions of users will be doing this on first boot up:

alt f2
gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf

Section "ServerFlags"
Option "DontZap" "no" 
EndSection





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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Dylan McCall]

> I agree with this guy, have it on by default, noobs can use GUI to switch it
> off.
>
> Else, millions of users will be doing this on first boot up:
>
> alt f2
> gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
>
> Section "ServerFlags"
> Option "DontZap" "no"
> EndSection

The important thing is that those millions of users actually don't
mind tinkering with xorg.conf and probably do anyway. The users we are
trying to help, however, Don't Know The Key Combo Exists, or that
xorg.conf exists, or that they need to explicitly tell the system how
to be easier to them, until it is too late. They don't want to do any
extra configuration after installing the operating system. Those
millions of power-users do.

It astounds me how people just forget about Ubuntu's goals and
aspiritions in light of this issue. It isn't doing much for user
friendliness when the community of contributors is using bad names on
those new users Ubuntu strives to be gentle to and then treating them
like outsiders.

It isn't /likely/ for someone to hit C-A-B (although it's been done
once or twice by yours truly, particularly with graphics tools), but
the immediate issue is that we have a key combination which, without a
moment's question, eradicates one's session from existence. No session
saving, no notice, no sensitivity to whether the keyboard is grabbed
or another application is handling the event. It just happens no
matter what. Further, it relies on common keys. Sysrq K is alright
since nobody tends to use the Sys RQ key, but Ctrl and Alt are both
everyday modifier keys and Backspace is a natural key for deleting
stuff. We want our users to feel free exploring Ubuntu without the
risk of wiping out the system (within reason, of course). Hopefully
they can gain a trust of themselves and the system that way, start
paying more attention to the text on the screen and learning what it
all means. One thing I know is that a single catastrophic event like
"tinkering led to the loss of two hour's work when I pressed Ctrl Alt
Backspace" causes someone to doubt the value of that exploring. Then
there's another user reliant on others for resolving all issues
related to the computer.

Something interesting I've learned in an Ubuntu Forums thread is that
a surprising number of people who want this key combo to stay don't
actually use it for its intended purpose (to reset X when it is
crashed). Instead, they use it as a shortcut for logging out. Doing
that is risky, messy and inadequate.
Perhaps if logging out (with session saving) was mapped to Ctrl Alt
Backspace we wouldn't have as many bothered users.


Bye,
-Dylan

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Justin M. Wray]

Even if a new user is unfamiliar with the key combination, it only takes a 
little education OR them doing it once. Lessons are learned hard.

Should we remove all the abilities that may "damage" the system?

Where does the line get drawn?

The C-A-B is an easy thing to learn and avoid, but a powerful resource when 
needed.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

-Original Message-
From: Dylan McCall 

Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:02:51 
To: Clive Wagenaar
Cc: 
Subject: Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?


> I agree with this guy, have it on by default, noobs can use GUI to switch it
> off.
>
> Else, millions of users will be doing this on first boot up:
>
> alt f2
> gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
>
> Section "ServerFlags"
> Option "DontZap" "no"
> EndSection

The important thing is that those millions of users actually don't
mind tinkering with xorg.conf and probably do anyway. The users we are
trying to help, however, Don't Know The Key Combo Exists, or that
xorg.conf exists, or that they need to explicitly tell the system how
to be easier to them, until it is too late. They don't want to do any
extra configuration after installing the operating system. Those
millions of power-users do.

It astounds me how people just forget about Ubuntu's goals and
aspiritions in light of this issue. It isn't doing much for user
friendliness when the community of contributors is using bad names on
those new users Ubuntu strives to be gentle to and then treating them
like outsiders.

It isn't /likely/ for someone to hit C-A-B (although it's been done
once or twice by yours truly, particularly with graphics tools), but
the immediate issue is that we have a key combination which, without a
moment's question, eradicates one's session from existence. No session
saving, no notice, no sensitivity to whether the keyboard is grabbed
or another application is handling the event. It just happens no
matter what. Further, it relies on common keys. Sysrq K is alright
since nobody tends to use the Sys RQ key, but Ctrl and Alt are both
everyday modifier keys and Backspace is a natural key for deleting
stuff. We want our users to feel free exploring Ubuntu without the
risk of wiping out the system (within reason, of course). Hopefully
they can gain a trust of themselves and the system that way, start
paying more attention to the text on the screen and learning what it
all means. One thing I know is that a single catastrophic event like
"tinkering led to the loss of two hour's work when I pressed Ctrl Alt
Backspace" causes someone to doubt the value of that exploring. Then
there's another user reliant on others for resolving all issues
related to the computer.

Something interesting I've learned in an Ubuntu Forums thread is that
a surprising number of people who want this key combo to stay don't
actually use it for its intended purpose (to reset X when it is
crashed). Instead, they use it as a shortcut for logging out. Doing
that is risky, messy and inadequate.
Perhaps if logging out (with session saving) was mapped to Ctrl Alt
Backspace we wouldn't have as many bothered users.


Bye,
-Dylan

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Clive Wagenaar]

On Tuesday 10 February 2009 15:57:02 Justin M. Wray wrote:
> Even if a new user is unfamiliar with the key combination, it only takes a
> little education OR them doing it once. Lessons are learned hard.
>
> Should we remove all the abilities that may "damage" the system?
>
> Where does the line get drawn?
>
> The C-A-B is an easy thing to learn and avoid, but a powerful resource when
> needed.

I agree 100% ^^

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Clive Wagenaar]

On Tuesday 10 February 2009 15:02:51 Dylan McCall wrote:
> The important thing is that those millions of users actually don't
> mind tinkering with xorg.conf and probably do anyway. The users we are
> trying to help, however, Don't Know The Key Combo Exists, or that
> xorg.conf exists, or that they need to explicitly tell the system how
> to be easier to them, until it is too late. They don't want to do any
> extra configuration after installing the operating system. Those
> millions of power-users do.

Ok, i get your point from ubuntu being simple etc.
Not sure it will help them in the long run, as they will have to hard boot 
when xserver hangs and maybe never know that ctl alt backspace was ever a 
option
(It is a pity this is from upstream where Arch, fedora etc will all also  
'dumbed down' too)

Like you say it is not a problem for the power users, just a small irritation.

I image that the developer of Ubuntu tweak program will just have one more 
thing to add to his program for jaunty :)

Stay Well

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Nergar -blank-]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 09:59, Clive Wagenaar wrote:

>
> (It is a pity this is from upstream where Arch, fedora etc will all also
> 'dumbed down' too)
>
>
Is this true? If it is, then C-A-B should be left disabled.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[habtool]

On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 17:42 -0600, Nergar -blank- wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 09:59, Clive Wagenaar
>  wrote:
> 
> (It is a pity this is from upstream where Arch, fedora etc
> will all also
> 'dumbed down' too)
> 
> 
> Is this true? If it is, then C-A-B should be left disabled.
> 
> -- 
> hacker != cracker

It is already affecting fedora, came across this 'new feature' when
trying out F11 Alpha a few days back to test BTRFS..

Quote:
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Alpha_release_notes#X_Server

X Server 
The key combination Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the X server has been
disabled by default. To get this behaviour back, add the the line 

Option "DontZap" "false"

to the ServerFlags section in xorg.conf.

end quote


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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[habtool]

On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 17:42 -0600, Nergar -blank- wrote:
> 
> 
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 09:59, Clive Wagenaar
>  wrote:
> 
> (It is a pity this is from upstream where Arch, fedora etc
> will all also
> 'dumbed down' too)
> 
> 
> Is this true? If it is, then C-A-B should be left disabled.
> 
> -- 
> hacker != cracker

More chats about it here:

http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com/2009/01/since-we-all-know-x-is-nowhere-near.html



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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[John Moser]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Justin M. Wray
 wrote:
> Even if a new user is unfamiliar with the key combination, it only takes a 
> little education OR them doing it once. Lessons are learned hard.
>

This is poorly conceived thinking, but switching it off is straight up
naive.  "This is a power user tool and can accidently happen, and is
bad when accidents happen, so let's take it away."  Knee-jerk reaction
to dumb down the system.

The correct solution is not dead-simple to implement, but it works:
When you C-A-B, grab the whole screen and put up a confirmation dialog
like gksudo does.  You can't switch desktops off it (CAB happens
sometimes while swapping around virtual desktops and landing in a text
editor, trying to backspace over stuff), and it's right in your face.
It says "In 10 seconds I will kill X and reload it.  This will destroy
all of your work.  Click the big red CANCEL button below now or hit
SPACE!"

If the X server is frozen, the dialog can't be shown, can't be
clicked, can't be touched.  All you have to do is modify X to take an
option "ZapProgram" "/usr/bin/uzapme" which gets the $DISPLAY
environment passed to it.  uzapme reads the user's configuration,
executes a child "gzapme" or "kazzapme" and waits 10 seconds for the
child to return.  If the child doesn't exit favorably, i.e. complains
it can't draw on X or just hangs (because of no user input, or because
it tried to talk to X and got hung up), uzapme kills it and returns an
unfavorable state to X.  X then executes the ZAP code.

This works because it relies on X's zap code to be executed.  If CAB
can cause X to exit, then it can instead cause X to run a child
process and wait() for a result.  If doing such would inherently hang
and fail to terminate X under conditions of the child returning status
"ESCREWTHISTERMINATEX" then obviously X is so borked right now that
the zap code wouldn't have functioned anyway and you would have had to
unplug it and plug it back in.

> Should we remove all the abilities that may "damage" the system?
>

No, just throw up a single safety net.  For many unsafe operations
this is '-f', so on a real (not Fedora) system you 'rm -r /' and it
goes "do you want to remove these files?" because you probably did
something damaging; whereas you 'rm -rf /' and it goes "oh, you know
what you doing, move zig."  If the user's dumb enough to use
'--force-all' or not click a button marked "Press this or your
computer is effectively going to crash," it's now officially his
fault.

> Where does the line get drawn?
>

Usually in the sand, but sometimes on paper.  In HTML the line gets
drawn at an  tag.

> The C-A-B is an easy thing to learn and avoid, but a powerful resource when 
> needed.
>

Same argument for magic sysrq keys... not for non-power-users, some
people just want the OS to get out of the way.

The REAL solution is to run everything through an X proxy that can
lose the X server head, like 'screen' for X.
> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
>
> -Original Message-
> From: Dylan McCall 
>
> Date: Tue, 10 Feb 2009 07:02:51
> To: Clive Wagenaar
> Cc: 
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?
>
>
>> I agree with this guy, have it on by default, noobs can use GUI to switch it
>> off.
>>
>> Else, millions of users will be doing this on first boot up:
>>
>> alt f2
>> gksudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
>>
>> Section "ServerFlags"
>> Option "DontZap" "no"
>> EndSection
>
> The important thing is that those millions of users actually don't
> mind tinkering with xorg.conf and probably do anyway. The users we are
> trying to help, however, Don't Know The Key Combo Exists, or that
> xorg.conf exists, or that they need to explicitly tell the system how
> to be easier to them, until it is too late. They don't want to do any
> extra configuration after installing the operating system. Those
> millions of power-users do.
>
> It astounds me how people just forget about Ubuntu's goals and
> aspiritions in light of this issue. It isn't doing much for user
> friendliness when the community of contributors is using bad names on
> those new users Ubuntu strives to be gentle to and then treating them
> like outsiders.
>
> It isn't /likely/ for someone to hit C-A-B (although it's been done
> once or twice by yours truly, particularly with graphics tools), but
> the immediate issue is that we have a key combination which, without a
> moment's question, eradicates one's session from existence. No session
> saving,

Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 23:52:21 + habtool  wrote:
>On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 17:42 -0600, Nergar -blank- wrote:
>> 
>> 
>> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 09:59, Clive Wagenaar
>>  wrote:
>> 
>> (It is a pity this is from upstream where Arch, fedora etc
>> will all also
>> 'dumbed down' too)
>> 
>> 
>> Is this true? If it is, then C-A-B should be left disabled.
>> 
>> -- 
>> hacker != cracker
>
>It is already affecting fedora, came across this 'new feature' when
>trying out F11 Alpha a few days back to test BTRFS..
>
>Quote:
>https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_11_Alpha_release_notes#X_Server
>
>X Server 
>The key combination Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to kill the X server has been
>disabled by default. To get this behaviour back, add the the line 
>
>Option "DontZap" "false"
>
>to the ServerFlags section in xorg.conf.
>
>end quote
>
The decision was made at UDS to follow upstream in this change.  We now have a 
package called 
dontzap that will allow you to set this back without hand editing xorg.conf.

In Kubuntu there is also a menu option to change this without resorting to 
command line.

I don't particularly care for the deicision that was made, but it's been 
made, so there's little point rehashing it now.

Scott K

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[habtool]

On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 19:06 -0500, John Moser wrote:
> The correct solution is not dead-simple to implement, but it works:
> When you C-A-B, grab the whole screen and put up a confirmation dialog
> like gksudo does.  You can't switch desktops off it (CAB happens
> sometimes while swapping around virtual desktops and landing in a text
> editor, trying to backspace over stuff), and it's right in your face.
> It says "In 10 seconds I will kill X and reload it.  This will destroy
> all of your work.  Click the big red CANCEL button below now or hit
> SPACE!"

This is how I would say it should be done :)



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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[habtool]

On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 19:10 -0500, Scott Kitterman wrote:
> I don't particularly care for the deicision that was made, but it's
> been 
> made, so there's little point rehashing it now.
> 
> Scott K

Cool,




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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[John Moser]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 7:10 PM, Scott Kitterman  wrote:
> I don't particularly care for the deicision that was made, but it's been
> made, so there's little point rehashing it now.
>

Fallacy.  I don't particularly care for the decision that every
computer should run Windows, but it's been made, so there's little
point in rehashing it now.

Do you see what I did there?

Incorrect decisions need to be questioned, fought, and reversed;
actually pushing a decision through neither makes it right nor
permanent.  In the scientific community they spend time trying to
disprove gravity and evolution, things we pretty much damn well know
are 100% accurate; if you feel something is wrong or just could be
done a better way it's worth pursuing.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:37:49 -0500 John Moser  
wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 7:10 PM, Scott Kitterman  
wrote:
>> I don't particularly care for the deicision that was made, but it's been
>> made, so there's little point rehashing it now.
>>
>
>Fallacy.  I don't particularly care for the decision that every
>computer should run Windows, but it's been made, so there's little
>point in rehashing it now.
>
>Do you see what I did there?
>
>Incorrect decisions need to be questioned, fought, and reversed;
>actually pushing a decision through neither makes it right nor
>permanent.  In the scientific community they spend time trying to
>disprove gravity and evolution, things we pretty much damn well know
>are 100% accurate; if you feel something is wrong or just could be
>done a better way it's worth pursuing.
>
This is engineering, not science.  There is no single answer that is right 
for everyone.

It's 9 days until feature freeze, so if you want it different I suggest 
sending patches.

Scott K

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[John Moser]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Scott Kitterman  wrote:
> On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:37:49 -0500 John Moser 
> wrote:
>>
> This is engineering, not science.  There is no single answer that is right
> for everyone.

Engineering is science.  How do you think engines get improved on?
This is computer science... software engineering, particularly.

>
> It's 9 days until feature freeze, so if you want it different I suggest
> sending patches.
>

Obviously given the solutions I outlined above, 9 days is not enough.
You would want to rewrite some stuff in a big, complex, and critical
software product; then you'd have to test it, a lot.  AFAIK things get
kicked out of feature freeze for not being stable enough or
well-tested before freezing-- which, btw, is a very good idea.

My point was more that if you think it's wrong, you should suggest and
continue to advocate a better solution, even after all is done and
said.  Maybe the NEXT release will turn around and do something
different; maybe it'll be FIVE releases down the line.  Hell, maybe
Xorg gets replaced with something much better someone came up with
this morning over coffee.  Things eventually change, sometimes the
changes get changed.

If you don't like it, keep thinking of better ways.
> Scott K
>
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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Mackenzie Morgan]

On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 19:06 -0500, John Moser wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Justin M. Wray
>  wrote:
> > Even if a new user is unfamiliar with the key combination, it only takes a 
> > little education OR them doing it once. Lessons are learned hard.
> >
> 
> This is poorly conceived thinking, but switching it off is straight up
> naive.  "This is a power user tool and can accidently happen, and is
> bad when accidents happen, so let's take it away."  Knee-jerk reaction
> to dumb down the system.
> 
> The correct solution is not dead-simple to implement, but it works:
> When you C-A-B, grab the whole screen and put up a confirmation dialog
> like gksudo does.  You can't switch desktops off it (CAB happens
> sometimes while swapping around virtual desktops and landing in a text
> editor, trying to backspace over stuff), and it's right in your face.
> It says "In 10 seconds I will kill X and reload it.  This will destroy
> all of your work.  Click the big red CANCEL button below now or hit
> SPACE!"
> 
> If the X server is frozen, the dialog can't be shown, can't be
> clicked, can't be touched.  

Sorry didn't read this far... knee-jerk reaction for the lose.

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http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com
apt-get moo


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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Mackenzie Morgan]

On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 19:06 -0500, John Moser wrote:
> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Justin M. Wray
>  wrote:
> > Even if a new user is unfamiliar with the key combination, it only takes a 
> > little education OR them doing it once. Lessons are learned hard.
> >
> 
> This is poorly conceived thinking, but switching it off is straight up
> naive.  "This is a power user tool and can accidently happen, and is
> bad when accidents happen, so let's take it away."  Knee-jerk reaction
> to dumb down the system.
> 
> The correct solution is not dead-simple to implement, but it works:
> When you C-A-B, grab the whole screen and put up a confirmation dialog
> like gksudo does. 

Not dead-simple...in fact: impossible!  The point of C-A-B is when X has
crashed or locked.  It by definition cannot do what you are suggesting
in such a situation.

I'm still in favor of OpenSUSE's way.  And this was already discussed on
ubuntu-devel.  It seemed that many agreed that either "press & hold" or
"press twice" (a la OpenSUSE) were good ways to do it, with "press
twice" having the discoverability bonus of "it didn't work so try again"
and the code bonus of already existing.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Scott Kitterman]

On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:26:06 -0500 John Moser  
wrote:
>On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Scott Kitterman  
wrote:
>> On Tue, 10 Feb 2009 19:37:49 -0500 John Moser 
>> wrote:
>>>
>> This is engineering, not science.  There is no single answer that is 
right
>> for everyone.
>
>Engineering is science.  How do you think engines get improved on?
>This is computer science... software engineering, particularly.

Science is a pursuit of knowledge.  Engineering applies it to practical 
problems in the real world.  Engineering involves trade offs between 
different requirements.  That's what happened here.  There is not one 
absolute right answer, but a balance between competing requirements.

>>
>> It's 9 days until feature freeze, so if you want it different I suggest
>> sending patches.
>>
>
>Obviously given the solutions I outlined above, 9 days is not enough.
>You would want to rewrite some stuff in a big, complex, and critical
>software product; then you'd have to test it, a lot.  AFAIK things get
>kicked out of feature freeze for not being stable enough or
>well-tested before freezing-- which, btw, is a very good idea.

Right, which gets to why I was saying I think more arguing about it is 
rather pointless at the moment.

>My point was more that if you think it's wrong, you should suggest and
>continue to advocate a better solution, even after all is done and
>said.  Maybe the NEXT release will turn around and do something
>different; maybe it'll be FIVE releases down the line.  Hell, maybe
>Xorg gets replaced with something much better someone came up with
>this morning over coffee.  Things eventually change, sometimes the
>changes get changed.

Sure.  In this case we are following an upstream change, so upstream is 
probably the best place to pursue getting it changed again.

>If you don't like it, keep thinking of better ways.

Of course.

Scott K

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[John Moser]

On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 8:57 PM, Mackenzie Morgan  wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 19:06 -0500, John Moser wrote:
>> On Tue, Feb 10, 2009 at 10:57 AM, Justin M. Wray
>>  wrote:
>> > Even if a new user is unfamiliar with the key combination, it only takes a 
>> > little education OR them doing it once. Lessons are learned hard.
>> >
>>
> Not dead-simple...in fact: impossible!  The point of C-A-B is when X has
> crashed or locked.  It by definition cannot do what you are suggesting
> in such a situation.

By definition, if X is completely incapable of executing any
additional codepath, it is itself completely incapable of terminating
when C-A-B is pressed.  C-A-B doesn't work when X fails to actually
obtain and respond to user input; it does work when X fails to pass
user input along to X clients, fails to update the display, fails to
respond to X clients, etc.  If the entire X process enters a state
from which it cannot continue execution, C-A-B does not work at all;
it's not a kernel function.

The solution I described was one which will fail to properly execute
when X cannot present clients to the user or properly deliver input to
the user, i.e. when it's lost control of the display, driver, etc.  If
X can still handle a zap, however, then it can also spawn a child
process and react to that child process' failure to properly execute
(i.e. notification by return code).

One other note is you really need to release the mouse from whoever
has it if you implement this.  I've had qemu crash, holding the mouse,
and now I no longer have mouse/keyboard in X aside from the ability to
ctrl-alt-F1 and execute another qemu to grab/release the mouse with.
Also nice would be a button that says "Task Manager" and brings up a
task manager, in display-frozen view, so that misbehaving mouse
grabbers can't have the mouse back until you kill them.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[habtool]

On Tue, 2009-02-10 at 20:57 -0500, Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
> 
> I'm still in favor of OpenSUSE's way.  And this was already discussed
> on
> ubuntu-devel.  It seemed that many agreed that either "press & hold"
> or
> "press twice" (a la OpenSUSE) were good ways to do it, with "press
> twice" having the discoverability bonus of "it didn't work so try
> again"
> and the code bonus of already existing.

This would work perfectly too!



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[Prototype] Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[John McCabe-Dansted]

On 2/11/09, Scott Kitterman  wrote:
> It's 9 days until feature freeze, so if you want it different I suggest
> sending patches.

Below is a prototype that I mocked up in half an hour; it gives a 10
second countdown. It would seem that something usable in 8 days is a
possibility if someone familiar with Ubuntu and X wants to

1) Approve the idea, perhaps with additional requirements. Does anyone
have objections to the user-interface of this script?

2) Set Cntl-Alt-Backspace to be a keyboard shortcut for this script.
Would setting this in Gnome/KDE/Xfce suffice? Or would these be likely
to be not working when we need them? My X crashes usually occur after
Gnome has loaded and I have started doing heavy 3D work.

3) Give the script some way to kill X. Perhaps add the following line
to the default sudoers:
   %plugdev ALL=NOPASSWD: killall Xorg

Although this was intended as a prototype, using zenity seems OK.
However wmctrl does not seem to be in
  http://cdimage.ubuntu.com/releases/jaunty/alpha-4/jaunty-desktop-i386.manifest
Is there an alternative way of raising a window to the foreground?

--

#!/bin/bash
# Script to kill X, but give user 10 seconds to cancel


# NOTE: Add keyboard shortcut so this is run when Ctrl-Alt-Del is run.
# NOTE: Allow logged in user to run "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart" or
#   "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm" restart without a password

TITLE="Really Restart X Server?"
TEXT="You pressed Ctrl-Alt-Backspace.
This is an emergency sequence to restart a frozen computer.
If you do not want to lose your unsaved data click Cancel NOW!"

which zenity || echo zenity missing, run sudo apt-get install zenity
which wmctrl || echo wmctrl missing, run sudo apt-get install wmctrl

i=0
while [ "$i" -le 100 ]
do
echo $i
sleep 0.1
wmctrl -R "$TITLE" #raise window
i=$(($i+1))
done | (
zenity --progress --title="$TITLE" --text="$TEXT" --auto-close &&
echo TESTONLY sudo killall Xorg
#echo TESTONLY /etc/init.d/gdm restart
)

-- 
John C. McCabe-Dansted
PhD Student
University of Western Australia

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Thomas Jaeger]

habtool wrote:
> 
> More chats about it here:
> 
> http://ubuntulinuxtipstricks.blogspot.com/2009/01/since-we-all-know-x-is-nowhere-near.html

I think it's quite telling that the people that have accepted X Server
freezes as a fact of life could point to a single bug report where such
an issue was discussed.  This, of course, leaves us completely in the
dark as to what the real issues are, but in any case, C-A-B is not the
solution.  It's very simple actually: If your X Server does weird stuff
like that, that's not normal (seriously, don't tell anyone it is,
because it isn't). *File a bug report*.  People are generally very
interested in fixes those.

Let's speculate a little bit what kind of issues these people are
seeing.  If it was bugs the drivers, C-A-B probably wouldn't do
anything.  I very much doubt that these are bugs in the actual X server,
because then everybody would be affected.  So that leaves as the most
likely candidate client applications that run amok and don't release a
server/pointer/keyboard grab.  If that's the case, nothing is lost yet
and you can switch to a terminal or ssh into your machine and kill the
offending application to get your X Server back to normal.  Then file a
bug report and get the application fixed.  I seem to remember something
about a release-all-grabs key, which would make it much easier to get
things back to normal, but I can't find anything about it right now.

Tom

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Remco]

Client applications, and even X.org itself, will always have bugs.
They are created by humans, and we are not perfect. In that respect,
it is normal behaviour. So C-A-B will never become obsolete.

Things that can happen:

* Client can grab keys but hang.
* System can become too slow to be usable.
* Xorg/drivers can have a bug that locks the screen.

All of these things will happen in the future, no matter what you do.
C-A-B will fix it in many cases. Hitting C-A-B twice is preferred over
a dialog, because you can't reasonably react to a dialog if the system
is too slow to be usable.

Remco

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Thomas Jaeger]

I can't really take these blanket statements seriously if you can't
point me to specific bug reports, sorry.

Remco wrote:
> Client applications, and even X.org itself, will always have bugs.
> They are created by humans, and we are not perfect. In that respect,
> it is normal behaviour. So C-A-B will never become obsolete.
> 
> Things that can happen:
> 
> * Client can grab keys but hang.
In that case, you get the X Server back to normal by killing the client
and you should try and fix the client.

> * System can become too slow to be usable.
This is way too vague to make a useful argument.

> * Xorg/drivers can have a bug that locks the screen.
As I said before, I doubt C-A-B will help you there. Shift+SysRq+K
might, though.

> All of these things will happen in the future, no matter what you do.
> C-A-B will fix it in many cases. Hitting C-A-B twice is preferred over
> a dialog, because you can't reasonably react to a dialog if the system
> is too slow to be usable.

The only acceptable solution to me is fixing the underlying problems.
>From what I'm gathering here, it seems like C-A-B is actually preventing
this from happening, so I'm more opposed to it than ever.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[John Moser]

On 2/12/09, Thomas Jaeger  wrote:

>>
>> Things that can happen:
>>
>> * Client can grab keys but hang.
> In that case, you get the X Server back to normal by killing the client
> and you should try and fix the client.

Killing the client actually prevents X from having any input; you lose
the input until you open a similar client (i.e. qemu) that regrabs,
then close it normally so it releases.

>
>> * Xorg/drivers can have a bug that locks the screen.
> As I said before, I doubt C-A-B will help you there. Shift+SysRq+K
> might, though.

Happens occasionally.  Shouldn't.  It breaks X clients' ability to
talk to the screen, doesn't update the screen, so everything waiting
on X hangs; but X still picks up the C-A-B somehow and dies.

Computers will always do very strange thnigs, most of which don't make
sense and shouldn't happen.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[John Moser]

Thomas Jaeger wrote:
> John Moser wrote:
>> On 2/12/09, Thomas Jaeger  wrote:
>>
 Things that can happen:

 * Client can grab keys but hang.
>>> In that case, you get the X Server back to normal by killing the client
>>> and you should try and fix the client.
>> Killing the client actually prevents X from having any input; you lose
>> the input until you open a similar client (i.e. qemu) that regrabs,
>> then close it normally so it releases.
> 
> This is not how grabs work.  If a client that has grabbed the
> Keyboard/Pointer/Server is killed all grabs are automatically released.
> 

Try this when qemu freezes.  I've frequently had to C-A-F1, kill qemu, 
then alt-F7 back and ... wow, nothing works.  C-A-F1, DISPLAY=0:0 qemu, 
go back, hit a button, hit C-A to release grab, and close qemu.  Repeatably.

 * Xorg/drivers can have a bug that locks the screen.
>>> As I said before, I doubt C-A-B will help you there. Shift+SysRq+K
>>> might, though.
>> Happens occasionally.  Shouldn't.  It breaks X clients' ability to
>> talk to the screen, doesn't update the screen, so everything waiting
>> on X hangs; but X still picks up the C-A-B somehow and dies.
> Bug report?
> 
>> Computers will always do very strange thnigs, most of which don't make
>> sense and shouldn't happen.
> Those things can be fixed though.
> 

Yes, exactly.  Just don't be surprised if someone says something happens 
that shouldn't.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Thomas Jaeger]

John Moser wrote:
> On 2/12/09, Thomas Jaeger  wrote:
> 
>>> Things that can happen:
>>>
>>> * Client can grab keys but hang.
>> In that case, you get the X Server back to normal by killing the client
>> and you should try and fix the client.
> 
> Killing the client actually prevents X from having any input; you lose
> the input until you open a similar client (i.e. qemu) that regrabs,
> then close it normally so it releases.

This is not how grabs work.  If a client that has grabbed the
Keyboard/Pointer/Server is killed all grabs are automatically released.

>>> * Xorg/drivers can have a bug that locks the screen.
>> As I said before, I doubt C-A-B will help you there. Shift+SysRq+K
>> might, though.
> 
> Happens occasionally.  Shouldn't.  It breaks X clients' ability to
> talk to the screen, doesn't update the screen, so everything waiting
> on X hangs; but X still picks up the C-A-B somehow and dies.
Bug report?

> Computers will always do very strange thnigs, most of which don't make
> sense and shouldn't happen.
Those things can be fixed though.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Thomas Jaeger]

John Moser wrote:
>> This is not how grabs work.  If a client that has grabbed the
>> Keyboard/Pointer/Server is killed all grabs are automatically released.
>>
> 
> Try this when qemu freezes.  I've frequently had to C-A-F1, kill qemu,
> then alt-F7 back and ... wow, nothing works.  C-A-F1, DISPLAY=0:0 qemu,
> go back, hit a button, hit C-A to release grab, and close qemu. 
> Repeatably.

I don't know what qemu is nor what it does when it claims do a "grab".
But regular X grabs behave the way I described above.  If they aren't
released when the connection closes chances are something else is going
on.  I know this is getting old, but you don't happen to have a link to
a bug report where this is discussed?

>> Bug report?
>>
>>> Computers will always do very strange thnigs, most of which don't make
>>> sense and shouldn't happen.
>> Those things can be fixed though.
>>
> 
> Yes, exactly.  Just don't be surprised if someone says something happens
> that shouldn't.

No.  What surprises me is when people are fine with those bugs as long
as there is a quick way to kill the X server that is enabled by default.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Peteris Krisjanis]

>> Yes, exactly.  Just don't be surprised if someone says something happens
>> that shouldn't.
>
> No.  What surprises me is when people are fine with those bugs as long
> as there is a quick way to kill the X server that is enabled by default.
>

Because they want to do the work, not report bugs - usually.

Just my two cents,
Peter.

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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Charlie Kravetz]

On Thu, 12 Feb 2009 20:16:02 -0500
Mike Jones  wrote:

> > No.  What surprises me is when people are fine with those
> > bugs
> as
> > long
> > as there is a quick way to kill the X server that is enabled by
> > default. 
> >
> >  People do file bugs. Perhaps not everyone, and perhaps not
> > every
> time.
> Well, then it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a few bug
> reports to give others an idea of what's going on here.
> 
> 
> You are right, it is not difficult to come up with a few bug reports.
> What would you suggest I do to continue with my business in the case
> X needs to be restarted without forcing my to shut down my system
> while the bug report is being triaged?
> If a bug happens once, it is possible for it to happen again (else,
> how is debugging possible?), what if this same bug happens to be a
> second time? I am still waiting for the bug to be debugged, yet have
> no quick way to get back to work in the mean time.
> It is unreasonable to expect even users who have programing
> experience to use the terminal for honestly much more than occasional
> scripts. I have absolutely no desire to C-A-F#, find the program that
> is giving me fits, and then kill it in the hopes it fixes my issue.
> 
> 
> > I'm one of those users who would prefer that the C-A-B command
> > be left as it is, or be modified to allow the ability through some
> > other
> interface:
> > such as twice successive.
> >
> > I have filed several bug reports about issues related to
> > problems with X, https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/289898 for example.
> This is a kernel bug.  I would be very surprised if C-A-B worked here.
> 
> 
> C-A-B does not work in that instance, you are correct. But since you
> seem to know so much about it, could you please provide a fix for me?
> I have been unable to figure out anything beyond what I reported
> already. It happens regularly to myself and all members of my
> universities LUG who have the same model laptop as myself. To be
> frank, it is quite annoying, regardless of C-A-B or not. However,
> while that was a poor example, it is the first one I thought of. I
> can create several new bug reports for x-crashes or glitches that I
> don't feel confident in reporting just yet do to lack of information
> on my part, if you would like. The bugs I would report happen
> haphazardly enough that I can't predict their cause yet, and I am
> able to deal with these problems (in most cases) by simply
> brute-force hacking the problem away via calling C-A-B to get back to
> what I was doing as quickly as possible. The problem may exist in any
> of the programs that I'm currently using, or may be unrelated to all
> of them and a problem with any of the hardware devices I have. I
> don't know how to reproduce any of the issues with reliability, but I
> would be happy to report the problems for you.
> 
> > But the problem is still going to be there for that person from
> > when they originally filed the bug until the problem has been
> > tracked down, until a fix has been written, until its been tested
> > to not break anything, until
> its
> > been patched to the package, until the package as been released, and
> finally
> > the package has been downloaded (and in the case of things like the
> kernal,
> > and graphics support) until the computer (or X) has been restarted.
> This is why we need to figure out if there's some sort of pattern
> behind the problems people are seeing.
> 
> I agree with John Moser. Allow the user to go back to work, and
> automatically file a bug report using the apport interface. I assume
> thats why apport exists, to catch crashes and report them when
> possible. Otherwise... why does it pop up on my screen whenever a
> program crashes..?
> 
> 
> > Once I submit a bug report about this issue, Can you give me a
> guarentee
> > that I will have an update sitting on my system within an amount of
> > time that make it reasonable to not have C-A-B immediately
> > available to me?
> If you really think you need it, it's really not that hard to enable
> it. Most people won't need it, so why should it be enabled by default?
> 
> By the way, nobody will guarantee you anything unless you're willing
> to pay money.
> 
> 
> I'm not willing to pay money, as I have none. However, that was not
> the reason I said that. My (potentially incorrect) impression is that
> you assume users who use Ubuntu are responsible for submitting bug
> reports when they encounter broken functionality or instability. In
> many cases, C-A-B is a work around for bugs that otherwise have no
> currently implimented fix. In the case of the issues I reported
> above, I am well aware that volunteers don't normally volunteer for
> issues that they are not concerned about. My problems are not
> necessarially the problems of the Ubuntu Dev's. Having C-A-B allows
> me to go on with my day without needing to bother them.
> 
> Yes, I can change my configuration files to bring the
> function

Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[John Moser]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 8:41 PM, Charlie Kravetz
 wrote:
> Okay, I have been reading this thread from the beginning. It seems like
> those making the most noise are the same individuals with the knowledge
> and ability to easily add the ability to use C-A-B back. Why should the
> thousands who do not need the ability be forced to have it to make it
> easier for the few that want it to be able to use it?
>
> Do you not customize your systems? This is just a very quick fix to
> re-enable the keypresses for yourselves. The many thousands who could
> care less are not even on the mailing list.
>

I actually removed zap myself ages ago due to randomly hitting it.  My
big problem is when I kill X I have 50 windows open and lose a LOT of
work.  It's disruptive.  I lose IRC, I lose the 10 tabs I have open in
firefox.  If you could make pidgin, xchat-gnome, and Firefox actually
restore properly (read:  Firefox RELOADS the tab it was in, it doesn't
come back up into the exact same state it shut down in!  This sucks!),
that would solve a large part of the problem for me.  Say, pidgin
crash-recovers by loading up all the same tabs with the same content
they had; xchat-gnome loads the same channels, queries, servers, with
the backlog all in place, and then complains it was disconnected and
reconnects for you.  That right there would make this whole thing far
less painless for me.

The big, unsolvable problem here for me is anything opened in a
terminal necessarily gets lost in a reboot.  In an X restart, it's on
me to use screen to save myself.  It's STILL worth more to me to NOT
accidentally zap X than it is to have to force a reboot when I could
have recovered.  Firefox, gaim, and xchat-gnome are annoying; with
openoffice and thunderbird, I recover documents and e-mail drafts
anyway; but with the terminal I can actually lose work.  I was zapping
by accident more often than on purpose so out it went.

This is precisely why I've been pushing for something that would TRY
to ask the user for confirmation, and give up if the client died or
got no response.  At least an ACCIDENTAL C-A-B would be abortable by
me.  The REAL solution is, yes, to fix the misbehaving programs (X or
otherwise); everyone has their own little list of programs that don't
recover from sudden X server kill to their liking, and I'm sure
they're all different from mine.

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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Onno Benschop]

On 13/02/09 10:41, Charlie Kravetz wrote:
> Okay, I have been reading this thread from the beginning. It seems like
> those making the most noise are the same individuals with the knowledge
> and ability to easily add the ability to use C-A-B back. Why should the
> thousands who do not need the ability be forced to have it to make it
> easier for the few that want it to be able to use it? 
>
> Do you not customize your systems? This is just a very quick fix to
> re-enable the keypresses for yourselves. The many thousands who could
> care less are not even on the mailing list.
>   

Have we got actual evidence that "the thousands who do not need the
ability" actually have a problem with C-A-B, or are we having this
debate just because there are a few who *think* there is a problem?

Just because it can happen, doesn't mean that it does - or have we just
received a spate of bug reports from users who lost data when they
pressed C-A-B?

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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Remco]

And please don't talk about "people making noise". That gets us nowhere.

Remco

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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Remco]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 3:56 AM, Remco  wrote:
> And please don't talk about "people making noise". That gets us nowhere.
>
> Remco
>

That was not supposed to be the only contents of my mail.

The people who are against the removal of C-A-B or equivalents think
that Ubuntu would be better in general if such a functionality
existed. So it does not make sense to tell those participants to the
discussion to just change the option for themselves. It is about the
defaults here. Many many more users than the followers of this list
know about C-A-B. It has worked like this for years. If it suddenly
doesn't work anymore, they will probably think that the computer
locked up so bad that they have to reboot. If they ever learn that
Ubuntu decided to get rid of it, they will probably complain. Or
not... not everybody complains about their problems. In this respect,
hitting C-A-B twice seems the only sensible solution, as Mackenzie
pointed out. Another key binding would also be possible, but slightly
less intuitive.

Remco

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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[richard.b...@blueyonder.co.uk]

Onno Benschop wrote:
> On 13/02/09 10:41, Charlie Kravetz wrote:
>> Okay, I have been reading this thread from the beginning. It seems like
>> those making the most noise are the same individuals with the knowledge
>> and ability to easily add the ability to use C-A-B back. Why should the
>> thousands who do not need the ability be forced to have it to make it
>> easier for the few that want it to be able to use it? 
>>
>> Do you not customize your systems? This is just a very quick fix to
>> re-enable the keypresses for yourselves. The many thousands who could
>> care less are not even on the mailing list.
>>   
> 
> Have we got actual evidence that "the thousands who do not need the
> ability" actually have a problem with C-A-B, or are we having this
> debate just because there are a few who *think* there is a problem?
> 
> Just because it can happen, doesn't mean that it does - or have we just
> received a spate of bug reports from users who lost data when they
> pressed C-A-B?
> 
Examples of aps thatneed to use CAB.
Some of the gnome card games which go full screen, and when you try to 
return to a normal display it wont.
Now try explaining to a total novice how to use CAF1, then log in, and 
then find the process and kill it.
Kaffeine will occasionall refuse to go back to a normal display as well,
its much easier to tell someone on the phone to use CAB and login again, 
and a lot safer.

BTW who desided that .gvfs had super root status ?, you can no longer
as root do a chown -R on your home directory.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Mike Jones]

Mario,

Yes. I would rather lose my work than switch to a virtual console and
spend half an hour finding out which offending program to kill.

I have tried several times to use C-A-F# to get back control of my gnome
session, and have yet to succeed. I rarely, if ever, have completely
unrecoverable work being preformed. OpenOffice saves my work every so often,
I never do text editing in gedit unless i'm programing. In which case more
likely than not I'm saving every minute or so. Pidgin, Firefox, if I lose my
state its no big deal.

Its a time trade off for me. Spend a potentially un-capped amount of
time finding which program is glitching, possibly only to find that its the
one program I have unsaved work in, or spend a known amount of time zapping
X, and getting back to work. I choose the guarenteed capped amount of time
over the uncapped amount of time in every case. I am often in situations
where I cannot afford any unknown delays.

Additionally, other times when I encounter gnome misbehaving, it isn't
because its frozen or unresponsive. My NVidea gfx, core 2 quad desktop
sometimes stops responding to the mouse, but still allows fully keyboard
interaction. (I believe this is related to java). I simply alt-tab to my
programs. Hit ctrl-s and save my document, and C-A-B into a new gnome
session. The alternative is spending potentially several dozen minutes
finding out which program is misbehaving. Is it annoying? Heck Yes. is it
less annoying than either of rebooting my machine or trying to find which
process is being an ass? Heck Yes.



Message: 7
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 09:45:57 +0100
From: Mario Vukelic 
Subject: Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good
   idea?   - no.
To: u-d-d 
Message-ID: <1234514757.12426.87.ca...@chronic>
Content-Type: text/plain

On Thu, 2009-02-12 at 20:16 -0500, Mike Jones wrote:
> I have absolutely no desire to C-A-F#, find the program that is giving
> me fits, and then kill it in the hopes it fixes my issue.

You rather lose your complete X session along with all data in open
files than switching to a virtual console and killing one offending
program? I gotta say I find that quite weird.
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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Dylan McCall]

This discussion is hardly relevant anymore. I agree the popup
explaining what the user is about to do would be a nice alternative,
but this is also a completely adequate solution.
I'm sure any patches for that alternative would have a good, warm and
fulfilling life.

Preferences? Fine; you can set your preferences in xorg.conf. (Please
nobody put them in Screen Resolution for the love of the Holy
Interface Guide).

Too late to set preferences, it's already crashed? Any power user who
would have used Ctrl Alt Backspace probably had the sense to read the
Jaunty release notes, which will have said (and I for one will make
sure they say this) that that key combination is disabled by default;
to use the kernel-level Alt SysRQ K instead.
While you're at it, get a different video driver.

SysRQ doesn't work or don't have the key? That's a bug in the kernel.
Please file it, or get a new keyboard. Try pressing Shift or Fn and
see if that makes a difference.

Would be sensible if keyboard / mouse grabs timed out after a while or
required the constant responsiveness of an "is alive" callback. (Or do
they?).


Bye,
-Dylan

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Remco]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Dylan McCall  wrote:
> This discussion is hardly relevant anymore. I agree the popup
> explaining what the user is about to do would be a nice alternative,
> but this is also a completely adequate solution.
> I'm sure any patches for that alternative would have a good, warm and
> fulfilling life.

Except that popups don't work on a severely overloaded system.

> to use the kernel-level Alt SysRQ K instead.

> While you're at it, get a different video driver.

> SysRQ doesn't work or don't have the key? That's a bug in the kernel.

> Would be sensible if

Would all be really cool, but that's not the current situation. First
solve those.

Remco

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

On 13/02/2009 Dylan McCall wrote:
> 
> Too late to set preferences, it's already crashed? Any power user who
> would have used Ctrl Alt Backspace probably had the sense to read the
> Jaunty release notes, which will have said (and I for one will make
> sure they say this) that that key combination is disabled by default;
> to use the kernel-level Alt SysRQ K instead.
> While you're at it, get a different video driver.

I am sorry for jumping in the middle of a discussion I did not follow 
but if CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE is going to be disabled how can anybody be 
protected from a fake login screen? And why should I reboot my machine 
if X deadlocks? At least the power button should kill X in case it can't 
be contacted.

V.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Dane Mutters]

I've been following this discussion, and it seems that some people have
been wanting some poll results.  This might be of interest:

http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1040988

--Dane


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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Mackenzie Morgan]

On Fri, 2009-02-13 at 08:15 +, richard.b...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote:
> Examples of aps thatneed to use CAB.

Oh, I know.  What about the cases where someone mistakenly believes that
running Frets on Fire will do something *other* than use all of the
resources so your computer can do nothing but attempt to commit sepuku?
C-A-B does work in this situation.  I think it's the only thing that
works.

(note: this may have been fixed since Hardy, but I learned not to touch
that app anymore)

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Mike Jones]

I believe Dylan is right that this discussion is no longer productive.

As I said before, it isn't that I personally object to the *zap X*
functionality being unlinked from C-A-B, as it is I object to the *zap X*
functionality having no default access method.

Changing C-A-B to A-S-K provides a reasonably solution. And I don't
particularly care *how* I access it, so long as that I can without needing
to change settings anywhere. My objection isn't that I personally can't
change settings. My objection is that most of the people who use Ubuntu that
I know rely on me to help when it confuses them. Most of the time this is
via the phone from half-way across the United States. They simply will not
understand how to modify this file, and many times the solution to their
problem is simply to zap X... but they don't know that. Their computer is
literally a unknowable black box to them, and they prefer to err on the side
of caution. The obvious solution, of course, is for me to modify this file
for them. But there are situations where that just is simply not possible.
(Remember, I am sometimes providing assistance from several hundred miles
away, with the person I am assisting basically being completely
computer-illiterate.).

I have no idea what the best way to both prevent accidental Zapping
while also allowing those users who wish to to Zap. But isn't it possible to
do that?

Others have suggested a forked process to notify the user of what they
just asked to do. Others have suggested C-A-B^2, and apparently
ctrl-alt-sysreq-k is supposed to offer similar functionality (though it asks
me if i wish to log out similar to the CtrlAltDel functionality, as sysreq
and del are the same key for me.)

What can be done?

Sincerely,
Michael Jones

Message: 6
Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:31:27 -0800
From: Dylan McCall 
Subject: Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good
   idea?
To: ubuntu-devel-discuss 
Message-ID:
   <9b6762c90902130831g12ca69efyb96a37c3df0f9...@mail.gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

This discussion is hardly relevant anymore. I agree the popup
explaining what the user is about to do would be a nice alternative,
but this is also a completely adequate solution.
I'm sure any patches for that alternative would have a good, warm and
fulfilling life.

Preferences? Fine; you can set your preferences in xorg.conf. (Please
nobody put them in Screen Resolution for the love of the Holy
Interface Guide).

Too late to set preferences, it's already crashed? Any power user who
would have used Ctrl Alt Backspace probably had the sense to read the
Jaunty release notes, which will have said (and I for one will make
sure they say this) that that key combination is disabled by default;
to use the kernel-level Alt SysRQ K instead.
While you're at it, get a different video driver.

SysRQ doesn't work or don't have the key? That's a bug in the kernel.
Please file it, or get a new keyboard. Try pressing Shift or Fn and
see if that makes a difference.

Would be sensible if keyboard / mouse grabs timed out after a while or
required the constant responsiveness of an "is alive" callback. (Or do
they?).


Bye,
-Dylan
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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea?

[Mike Jones]

Mario,

I'm sorry if I appear to be bitching / whining. That wasn't my intention. If
you would like I can stop posting my thoughts. I didn't intend to cause
problems.

**Your problem, really.

I don't believe so. While the command line is reasonably simple to use
for me, as I have said in other posts, it is not so simple for others that I
know. They are very hesitant to ever use it, and some of them do not know
that there are virtual terminals in the first place.

But the problem of lost work is not what bothers me. Please rest assured
my work is very important to me. But I save often enough that it is
impractical to worry about it.  As I've posted previous to your reply, my
concern is for the time. Given a capped, or uncapped length of time needed
to be spent getting back to what i was doing, I choose a capped and finite
amount of time. That's my choice and I have no problem with losing my
(rarely) unsaved work because of it.

For the example of say my grandparents. They do not know what the
terminal is. They do not know they have a series of virtual terminals, and
they also do not have the capability to reliably use either when given voice
direction. They do not have any understanding of networking, or port
forwarding, so sshing into their machine is not conceivable, and
occasionally, I do get a phone call from them asking me why their mouse
won't respond. Every time, my question is "will you lose anything
important?", every time their reply is "no, i was only reading email" and
every time my response is to do "C-A-B".

Yes, as I've said before, editing a config file is not impossible. But
for my grandparents, who I cannot reasonably be expected to have physical
contact with more often that every few months, it is entirely impossible.

Your reply will be to tell them not to upgrade to jaunty. My reply is
that they should be able to use the updater without worrying that they
cannoy rely on their grandson for support because he will ask them to use
the command line.


For various reasons which I may have mentioned before. I have had to
kill X using the C-A-B key shortcuts several dozen times per month since I
began using Linux. Am I doing something wrong? Ubuntu freezes or misbehaves
quite a bit less than Windows does, and I assumed that because many of the
packages I used were still being improved, there may have been bugs or
problems. When I have been able to I have submitted a report.

Perhaps I am doing something I'm not supposed to with the way I have my
machine set up? I could give you information about it if you can tell me
what to provide. I would be very grateful for your help if you could point
out what I'm doing that causes me so many problems.

Thank you

-Michael Jones

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 5:19 PM, Mario Vukelic wrote:

> On Fri, 2009-02-13 at 11:15 -0500, Mike Jones wrote:
> >   Yes. I would rather lose my work than switch to a virtual console
> > and spend half an hour finding out which offending program to kill.
>
> Your problem, really.
>
> > I have tried several times to use C-A-F# to get back control of my
> > gnome session, and have yet to succeed. I rarely, if ever, have
> > completely unrecoverable work being preformed.
>
> Well, other people actually do useful work on their computers and lose
> it because they accidentally hit C-A-B. I don't think that executing *a
> single command* to reenable it, if your really want it, is worth all the
> bitching on the list.
>
> I, personally, have used Linux distros extensively since 1996 and can't
> even recall the last time I had to kill X, it certainly was before 2000.
> And maybe 5 times in all, I'd guess.
>
>
>
>
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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[(``-_-´´) -- BUGabundo]

Olá John e a todos.

On Friday 13 February 2009 02:08:35 John Moser wrote:
> (read:  Firefox RELOADS the tab it was in, it doesn't come back up into the 
> exact same state it shut down in!  This sucks!)

Give TabMix Plus (session saver feature) Firefox addon a try.
it restores everything to me, even current position in a page.
Also there's Text Area addon, that can restore any text form.

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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Dylan McCall]

Re: SysRQ not working. Try it in a virtual terminal and see if that
works (something harmless, like Alt SysRQ M).

For starters, the SysRQ / Print Screen key becomes SysRQ when Alt is
being pressed.

If you change the GNOME keyboard settings you could find different
results. Is it possible that whether userspace is using the Alt
Printscreen key combination impacts whether the kernel does the Magic
SysRQ stuff?


Thanks,
-Dylan

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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Mackenzie Morgan]

On Sunday 15 February 2009 12:24:32 pm Dylan McCall wrote:
> Re: SysRQ not working. Try it in a virtual terminal and see if that
> works (something harmless, like Alt SysRQ M).
> 
> For starters, the SysRQ / Print Screen key becomes SysRQ when Alt is
> being pressed.

Don't you mean when Fn is being pressed?  Laptop users usually have to hit 
Alt+Fn+SysRq+

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Re: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Dane Mutters]

On Sun, 2009-02-15 at 15:50 -0500, Mackenzie Morgan wrote:
> On Sunday 15 February 2009 12:24:32 pm Dylan McCall wrote:
> > Re: SysRQ not working. Try it in a virtual terminal and see if that
> > works (something harmless, like Alt SysRQ M).
> > 
> > For starters, the SysRQ / Print Screen key becomes SysRQ when Alt is
> > being pressed.
> 
> Don't you mean when Fn is being pressed?  Laptop users usually have to hit 
> Alt+Fn+SysRq+
> 

Mike Jones started a bug report with some useful information on this
issue.  (I don't know if you saw that email; this thread is massive...)
I just want to point anybody who's interested to this link, in case you
have any ideas as to what's going on or how to fix it.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/329644

Thanks.

--Dane


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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Mike Jones]

Hi Thomas,

I'm one of those users who would prefer that the C-A-B command be left
as it is, or be modified to allow the ability through some other interface:
such as twice successive.

I have filed several bug reports about issues related to problems with
X, https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/289898 for example.

And have several waiting to be filed upon me figuring out which out of
the 30 programs i normally have running cause the issue.

It isn't always that C-A-B lets me get back to work without needing to
do a complete restart, but unfortunately I won't ever believe someone who
tells me that Ubuntu has a completely fool-proof stable graphical
environment. Unless I'm doing something drastically wrong, I feel
encountering SOME problem once a day is no big deal. But thats okay, as
Ubuntu is still loads better than anything else I've used.

But Thomas, my main issue with with your standpoint is basically this

No.  What surprises me is when people are fine with those bugs as
long
as there is a quick way to kill the X server that is enabled by default.


 People do file bugs. Perhaps not everyone, and perhaps not every time.
But the problem is still going to be there for that person from when they
originally filed the bug until the problem has been tracked down, until a
fix has been written, until its been tested to not break anything, until its
been patched to the package, until the package as been released, and finally
the package has been downloaded (and in the case of things like the kernal,
and graphics support) until the computer (or X) has been restarted.

What do you suggest I do between when I report the problem until a fix
exists on my machine? Assume that I have no desire to modify configuration
files (Honestly I hate messing with config files. I personally think Ubuntu
does a very poor job of presenting them in a user friendly way. But that is
only my persona opinion), and have no ability to fix the problem myself. (I
do have a programing background, but this is for the sake of arguemnet).

 Every time a problem comes up that makes my normal workflow completely
impossible (Which happens nightly for me, to be honest. But I haven't
reported this bug because I'm still trying to figure out if its my own fault
of not), about 90% of the time, C-A-B brings me back to doing what I was
doing within 60 seconds. Not haveing C-A-B normally would make it impossible
for me to log out, reboot, or switch to C-A-Fsomething, for some reason
C-A-B works, but these methods don't, as far as I've been able to try them,
and trust me I have.

Once I submit a bug report about this issue, Can you give me a guarentee
that I will have an update sitting on my system within an amount of time
that make it reasonable to not have C-A-B immediately available to me?

Idealistically, C-A-B is not needed, because Ideally there are no
problems.

Realistically, C-A-B is useful to the points that I personally feel it
to be necessary to my computing on a day to day basis.

MIchael Jones
Junior Software Engineering and Computer Science major
Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology


Message: 5
Date: Thu, 12 Feb 2009 02:08:39 -0500
From: Thomas Jaeger 
Subject: Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good
   idea?
To: John Moser 
Cc: ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com, Dylan McCall
   
Message-ID: <4993caf7.5060...@gmail.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8

John Moser wrote:
>> This is not how grabs work.  If a client that has grabbed the
>> Keyboard/Pointer/Server is killed all grabs are automatically released.
>>
>
> Try this when qemu freezes.  I've frequently had to C-A-F1, kill qemu,
> then alt-F7 back and ... wow, nothing works.  C-A-F1, DISPLAY=0:0 qemu,
> go back, hit a button, hit C-A to release grab, and close qemu.
> Repeatably.

I don't know what qemu is nor what it does when it claims do a "grab".
But regular X grabs behave the way I described above.  If they aren't
released when the connection closes chances are something else is going
on.  I know this is getting old, but you don't happen to have a link to
a bug report where this is discussed?

>> Bug report?
>>
>>> Computers will always do very strange thnigs, most of which don't make
>>> sense and shouldn't happen.
>> Those things can be fixed though.
>>
>
> Yes, exactly.  Just don't be surprised if someone says something happens
> that shouldn't.

No.  What surprises me is when people are fine with those bugs as long
as there is a quick way to kill the X server that is enabled by default.
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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Evan]

>From what I understand, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace isn't the only way to kill X.

Alt-Sysrq-k also works, and is still enabled, as it is significantly less
likely to be hit by accident.

I don't really see what all the fuss is about? People who know what they're
doing can still kill X if necessary, and people who don't know what they're
doing won't accidentally lose all their work when they mis-type. It seems
win-win to me.

Just my two cents,
Evan
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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Scott Kitterman]

On Thu, 12 Feb 2009 16:17:30 -0500 Evan  wrote:
>From what I understand, Ctrl-Alt-Backspace isn't the only way to kill X.
>
>Alt-Sysrq-k also works, and is still enabled, as it is significantly less 
likely to be hit by accident.
>
... for some definition of "works" and not on all hardware.  A substantial 
fraction of people I'm aware of the tried this had problems.  On my laptop 
it makes the wifi light blink twice.

Scott K

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Thomas Jaeger]

This is not a healthy discussion.  We have people claiming that they
can't live without C-A-B, yet they're unable to come up with any
*concrete* situations where they need it.  I don't doubt that these
issues exist, but my guess is that in most of those cases, C-A-B is the
wrong way to go about it.  To make any progress here, we need more data,
it's as simple as that.  Otherwise it's impossible to make any sort of
generalizations as to why these situations happen.  For example, if it
turned out that most of those lock-ups are due to grabs gone awry, it
wouldn't be top difficult to implement and advertise a Release-All-Grabs
key, that would take care of the issue without the need for killing X.

Mike Jones wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
> 
> I'm one of those users who would prefer that the C-A-B command be left
> as it is, or be modified to allow the ability through some other interface:
> such as twice successive.
> 
> I have filed several bug reports about issues related to problems with
> X, https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/289898 for example.
This is a kernel bug.  I would be very surprised if C-A-B worked here.

> No.  What surprises me is when people are fine with those bugs as
> long
> as there is a quick way to kill the X server that is enabled by default.
> 
> 
>  People do file bugs. Perhaps not everyone, and perhaps not every time.
Well, then it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a few bug
reports to give others an idea of what's going on here.

> But the problem is still going to be there for that person from when they
> originally filed the bug until the problem has been tracked down, until a
> fix has been written, until its been tested to not break anything, until its
> been patched to the package, until the package as been released, and finally
> the package has been downloaded (and in the case of things like the kernal,
> and graphics support) until the computer (or X) has been restarted.
This is why we need to figure out if there's some sort of pattern behind
the problems people are seeing.

> Once I submit a bug report about this issue, Can you give me a guarentee
> that I will have an update sitting on my system within an amount of time
> that make it reasonable to not have C-A-B immediately available to me?
If you really think you need it, it's really not that hard to enable it.
 Most people won't need it, so why should it be enabled by default?

By the way, nobody will guarantee you anything unless you're willing to
pay money.


> Realistically, C-A-B is useful to the points that I personally feel it
> to be necessary to my computing on a day to day basis.
Then enable it.  Most people would probably call such a system unusable
either way.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Remco]

Every program that hangs but doesn't release grabs is a problem. You
could certainly implement some kind of solution to that, but only
after that solution is implemented, C-A-B or equivalents should be
disabled. Not before.

Every program that makes the system so slow that it becomes unusable
is a problem. This can't be solved. Any buggy program can take so much
CPU/RAM/IO that your mouse pointer moves only every 10 seconds and
your key presses only register after that same time. Only a simple key
press that kills the program can solve this. Or a hard reset. We
shouldn't remove the reset button functionality either.

This means that C-A-B or equivalents can never be disabled.

Concrete examples: Windows games run in Wine. Some will leak memory or
whatever. You can't file bug reports against those games. And even if
you could, you would still experience the problem until it was solved.

Remco

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[John Moser]

On Thu, Feb 12, 2009 at 5:16 PM, Thomas Jaeger  wrote:
> This is not a healthy discussion.  We have people claiming that they
> can't live without C-A-B, yet they're unable to come up with any
> *concrete* situations where they need it.  I don't doubt that these
> issues exist, but my guess is that in most of those cases, C-A-B is the
> wrong way to go about it.  To make any progress here, we need more data,
> it's as simple as that.  Otherwise it's impossible to make any sort of
> generalizations as to why these situations happen.  For example, if it
> turned out that most of those lock-ups are due to grabs gone awry, it
> wouldn't be top difficult to implement and advertise a Release-All-Grabs
> key, that would take care of the issue without the need for killing X.
>

I have a solution for you:  X is still alive enough to catch C-A-B,
have it request a core dump from the kernel.  A vmem dump and
vregister dump would also be helpful but we can't reliably enter video
memory or play with video registers without triggering a
hardware-state issue and locking on a request to said hardware.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Thomas Jaeger]

Remco wrote:
> Every program that hangs but doesn't release grabs is a problem. You
> could certainly implement some kind of solution to that, but only
> after that solution is implemented, C-A-B or equivalents should be
> disabled. Not before.
I know that this is possible, but the question is how common this
situation is.

> Every program that makes the system so slow that it becomes unusable
> is a problem. This can't be solved. Any buggy program can take so much
> CPU/RAM/IO that your mouse pointer moves only every 10 seconds and
> your key presses only register after that same time. Only a simple key
> press that kills the program can solve this. Or a hard reset. We
> shouldn't remove the reset button functionality either.
If an application is hogging resources, you'll want to kill that
application, not X.

> This means that C-A-B or equivalents can never be disabled.
I think should be pretty clear by now that they can :)

> Concrete examples: Windows games run in Wine. Some will leak memory or
> whatever. You can't file bug reports against those games. And even if
> you could, you would still experience the problem until it was solved.
Okay, now we're getting closer.  There's no reason you can't make wine
handle those situations more gracefully.  But really, if you're doing
highly experimental things like running windows games in wine, it's not
unreasonable to expect that you do the tiny amount of extra of work if
you want enable C-A-B.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Dotan Cohen]

> This is not a healthy discussion.  We have people claiming that they
> can't live without C-A-B, yet they're unable to come up with any
> *concrete* situations where they need it.

Compiz always crashes on me, and I need CAB to get back to something.
Yes, it is a workaround because of another bug, but at least I have
that workaround.

Similarly, 3-D apps such as Google Earth and Stellarium often lock up
on my system (for the past three Ubuntu versions) and I need to CAB at
that time as well.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Remco]

On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 12:04 AM, Thomas Jaeger  wrote:
> I know that this is possible, but the question is how common this
> situation is.

Apparently it's pretty common, as some people use C-A-B every week. I
don't use it quite that much, but I don't want it to go away. You
don't remove a fail-safe until you solve the problem that the
fail-safe works around, if that is even possible.

> If an application is hogging resources, you'll want to kill that
> application, not X.

That's true, but how are you going to tell your computer to kill one
specific program if it will take you more time to specify it than to
just hit the (also unnecessary?) reset button on your pc and wait for
a reboot. It could take hours of hitting keys and waiting for the
screen to be updated.

> Okay, now we're getting closer.  There's no reason you can't make wine
> handle those situations more gracefully.  But really, if you're doing
> highly experimental things like running windows games in wine, it's not
> unreasonable to expect that you do the tiny amount of extra of work if
> you want enable C-A-B.

Experimental or not, according to popcon about half of the Ubuntu
users runs Wine. And how is Wine going to protect against system
overload if Linux can't do it either? Technically nothing is wrong...
it's just a *little* slow.

Other example: running whatever OS, doing *something* in an emulator
such as Qemu or Vbox. Suddenly you're out of RAM, out of swap space,
your disk IO is through the roof, and your CPU is constantly 100%.

There are so many ways to bring down the performance of your computer
that you just can't prevent it.

Remco

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Mike Jones]

> No.  What surprises me is when people are fine with those bugs
as
> long
> as there is a quick way to kill the X server that is enabled by default.
> 
>
>  People do file bugs. Perhaps not everyone, and perhaps not every
time.
Well, then it shouldn't be too difficult to come up with a few bug
reports to give others an idea of what's going on here.


You are right, it is not difficult to come up with a few bug reports.
What would you suggest I do to continue with my business in the case X needs
to be restarted without forcing my to shut down my system while the bug
report is being triaged?
If a bug happens once, it is possible for it to happen again (else, how is
debugging possible?), what if this same bug happens to be a second time? I
am still waiting for the bug to be debugged, yet have no quick way to get
back to work in the mean time.
It is unreasonable to expect even users who have programing experience to
use the terminal for honestly much more than occasional scripts. I have
absolutely no desire to C-A-F#, find the program that is giving me fits, and
then kill it in the hopes it fixes my issue.


> I'm one of those users who would prefer that the C-A-B command be left
> as it is, or be modified to allow the ability through some other
interface:
> such as twice successive.
>
> I have filed several bug reports about issues related to problems with
> X, https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/289898 for example.
This is a kernel bug.  I would be very surprised if C-A-B worked here.


C-A-B does not work in that instance, you are correct. But since you seem to
know so much about it, could you please provide a fix for me? I have been
unable to figure out anything beyond what I reported already. It happens
regularly to myself and all members of my universities LUG who have the same
model laptop as myself. To be frank, it is quite annoying, regardless of
C-A-B or not. However, while that was a poor example, it is the first one I
thought of. I can create several new bug reports for x-crashes or glitches
that I don't feel confident in reporting just yet do to lack of information
on my part, if you would like. The bugs I would report happen haphazardly
enough that I can't predict their cause yet, and I am able to deal with
these problems (in most cases) by simply brute-force hacking the problem
away via calling C-A-B to get back to what I was doing as quickly as
possible. The problem may exist in any of the programs that I'm currently
using, or may be unrelated to all of them and a problem with any of the
hardware devices I have. I don't know how to reproduce any of the issues
with reliability, but I would be happy to report the problems for you.

> But the problem is still going to be there for that person from when they
> originally filed the bug until the problem has been tracked down, until a
> fix has been written, until its been tested to not break anything, until
its
> been patched to the package, until the package as been released, and
finally
> the package has been downloaded (and in the case of things like the
kernal,
> and graphics support) until the computer (or X) has been restarted.
This is why we need to figure out if there's some sort of pattern behind
the problems people are seeing.

I agree with John Moser. Allow the user to go back to work, and
automatically file a bug report using the apport interface. I assume thats
why apport exists, to catch crashes and report them when possible.
Otherwise... why does it pop up on my screen whenever a program crashes..?


> Once I submit a bug report about this issue, Can you give me a
guarentee
> that I will have an update sitting on my system within an amount of time
> that make it reasonable to not have C-A-B immediately available to me?
If you really think you need it, it's really not that hard to enable it.
 Most people won't need it, so why should it be enabled by default?

By the way, nobody will guarantee you anything unless you're willing to
pay money.


I'm not willing to pay money, as I have none. However, that was not the
reason I said that. My (potentially incorrect) impression is that you assume
users who use Ubuntu are responsible for submitting bug reports when they
encounter broken functionality or instability. In many cases, C-A-B is a
work around for bugs that otherwise have no currently implimented fix. In
the case of the issues I reported above, I am well aware that volunteers
don't normally volunteer for issues that they are not concerned about. My
problems are not necessarially the problems of the Ubuntu Dev's. Having
C-A-B allows me to go on with my day without needing to bother them.

Yes, I can change my configuration files to bring the functionality back
after it is disabled, but my grandfather cannot. Nor can my mother, nor can
many of the friends who I have installed Ubuntu for. Yes, I can personally
help them change the behavior, but that is not the case for everyone. Some
people use Ubuntu because it is f

Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Mario Vukelic]

On Thu, 2009-02-12 at 20:16 -0500, Mike Jones wrote:
> I have absolutely no desire to C-A-F#, find the program that is giving
> me fits, and then kill it in the hopes it fixes my issue.

You rather lose your complete X session along with all data in open
files than switching to a virtual console and killing one offending
program? I gotta say I find that quite weird.


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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Martin Pitt]

Thomas Jaeger [2009-02-12 17:16 -0500]:
> This is not a healthy discussion.  We have people claiming that they
> can't live without C-A-B

Nobody stops them from re-enabling it (to the contrary, there's a new
tool "dontzap" which makes this very easy). Please keep in mind that
we aren't discussing taking this away entirely, just changing the
default.

Also, please be aware of the fact that this is a *developer* list,
who naturally has a differnent and more expert-oriented approach to
using a system.

Martin
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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Fergal Daly]

2009/2/13 Martin Pitt :
> Thomas Jaeger [2009-02-12 17:16 -0500]:
>> This is not a healthy discussion.  We have people claiming that they
>> can't live without C-A-B
>
> Nobody stops them from re-enabling it (to the contrary, there's a new
> tool "dontzap" which makes this very easy). Please keep in mind that
> we aren't discussing taking this away entirely, just changing the
> default.
>
> Also, please be aware of the fact that this is a *developer* list,
> who naturally has a differnent and more expert-oriented approach to
> using a system.

Anyway, I'm curious, is this really a developer list? I subscribed
because it was the only way to _contact_ ubuntu developers and I've
seen lots of people use it for that. So maybe it has more technical
users than the average but that's not the same thing as being a
developer list.

So is there a "user" list somewhere with thousands of people
complaining about the existence of CAB?

On the CAB issue, I won't miss it and I can't remember the last time I
needed it bu I would point out that on my wife's Japanese laptop, I
have never been able to find a way to press alt-sysrq-anything.
Requiring double-CAB seems like a good idea to me,


F
> Martin
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>
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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Odysseus Flappington]

2009/2/13 Fergal Daly :
> 2009/2/13 Martin Pitt :
>> Thomas Jaeger [2009-02-12 17:16 -0500]:
>>> This is not a healthy discussion.  We have people claiming that they
>>> can't live without C-A-B
>>
>> Nobody stops them from re-enabling it (to the contrary, there's a new
>> tool "dontzap" which makes this very easy). Please keep in mind that
>> we aren't discussing taking this away entirely, just changing the
>> default.
>>
>> Also, please be aware of the fact that this is a *developer* list,
>> who naturally has a differnent and more expert-oriented approach to
>> using a system.
>
> Anyway, I'm curious, is this really a developer list? I subscribed
> because it was the only way to _contact_ ubuntu developers and I've
> seen lots of people use it for that. So maybe it has more technical
> users than the average but that's not the same thing as being a
> developer list.
>
> So is there a "user" list somewhere with thousands of people
> complaining about the existence of CAB?
>
> On the CAB issue, I won't miss it and I can't remember the last time I
> needed it bu I would point out that on my wife's Japanese laptop, I
> have never been able to find a way to press alt-sysrq-anything.
> Requiring double-CAB seems like a good idea to me,
>
>
> F
>> Martin
>> --
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>>
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+1 to double-CAB

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Andrew Sayers]

Fergal Daly wrote:
> Anyway, I'm curious, is this really a developer list? I subscribed
> because it was the only way to _contact_ ubuntu developers and I've
> seen lots of people use it for that. So maybe it has more technical
> users than the average but that's not the same thing as being a
> developer list.

Since we're busy talking about C-A-B right now, I thought I'd delay
posting the results of the signal:noise survey until next week.  Without
wanting to pre-empt that discussion, I think it's fair to say there's a
range of voices around here.

Back on topic, how about this for a compromise solution:

Make tty1 run a simple ncurses application similar to friendly-recovery,
which would give you a set of options like "restart your computer", "log
out", and "go back to your graphical session".  Then people can do
c-a-f1 instead of c-a-b to get 99% of the value without the risk.
Ubuntu users that really want a shell wouldn't be that inconvenienced,
as they can still use c-a-f1 to c-a-f6.

- Andrew

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Peteris Krisjanis]

Disclaimer: I am not developer, just active bug reporter and Ubuntu
tester and advocate :) And I agree with one of previous posters that
this is one of rare places where you actually can speak with Ubuntu
devs about things you like/don't like/would like to see implemented
(another is #ubuntu-devel on freenode). Some devs can't take the heat
- I don't blame them, as they are simple mortals, breathing human
beings like us - and yes, some of them drop out of here. But that's
the curse of any open community.

List should stay open and non-devs should be allowed to post in it.
However, what I think we need is to repeatedly point to netiquete and
ask people to be polite to each other.

About the topic - lot of arguments for and against have been said
about C-A-B, so I won't recite them here. Probably some middle ground
- double C-A-B instead of single press or something like that - should
be achieved. Real life anedocte happened to me yesterday, when freshly
apt-get update borked my Jaunty desktop and I automatically reached
for C-A-B. Of course I was confused :). But I am still not sure that
leaving C-A-B is best idea. It will be up to Ubuntu release people to
decide.

What is more interesting for me that C-A-B dilemma actually shows what
is huge Ubuntu/free desktop problem and what I think will be next
target for us for next 5 - 6 years. That is *consistency*.

By theory, C-A-B should be disabled and no one should ever miss it.
However, it is not that easy. As some previous poster argued for
leaving C-A-B, lot of Nvidia cards with binary drivers just breaks
virtual consoles. And we know that Nvidia binary drivers are mostly
crashers when we are talking about video. And sure there are even more
exotic drivers who blocks virtual consoles entirely, if I remember
correctly.

Have been video drivers not so sucky, or even more - not closed
source, everyone would be happy. However, if each of them have
different attitude to supporting VC...that's the problem.

Second problem is that by theory, if you want, you can turn it on in
config file. However, in pratice you NEVER know when you will need it.
You need it usually suddenly and then it is too late for that.

For opposite side I would say there are one serious argument and it is
medium/small laptops and ctrl+alt+del pushers. First group of users
have very small keyboard and possibility to press pressing C-A-B it is
not that small statistically anymore. And there are people who are
used to their Windows habbits and try to press C-A-D. They easily can
hit Backspace instead of Delete.

To returning what I said about consistency - we lack rules to make
decisions like this one. Where is that border when we should leave
C-A-B? How we should seek solution? What is veryfable data here? And
finally - who makes decision and on what this decision is based on?

Some people argue that more democracy in decision making increases
stop power. I wouldn't be that sure - just ask for arguments, listen,
wet them against yours and then just do it.

This is not only about C-A-B, but also about PulseAudio,
NetworkManager, etc. We need management clean-up in sense - we must
understand what is happening and why.

Just my humble thoughts,
Peters.

2009/2/13 Andrew Sayers :
> Fergal Daly wrote:
>> Anyway, I'm curious, is this really a developer list? I subscribed
>> because it was the only way to _contact_ ubuntu developers and I've
>> seen lots of people use it for that. So maybe it has more technical
>> users than the average but that's not the same thing as being a
>> developer list.
>
> Since we're busy talking about C-A-B right now, I thought I'd delay
> posting the results of the signal:noise survey until next week.  Without
> wanting to pre-empt that discussion, I think it's fair to say there's a
> range of voices around here.
>
> Back on topic, how about this for a compromise solution:
>
> Make tty1 run a simple ncurses application similar to friendly-recovery,
> which would give you a set of options like "restart your computer", "log
> out", and "go back to your graphical session".  Then people can do
> c-a-f1 instead of c-a-b to get 99% of the value without the risk.
> Ubuntu users that really want a shell wouldn't be that inconvenienced,
> as they can still use c-a-f1 to c-a-f6.
>
>- Andrew
>
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>



-- 
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Pēteris Krišjānis

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Jeff Hanson]

> Date: Fri, 13 Feb 2009 10:30:38 +
> From: Andrew Sayers 
> Subject: Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good
>idea?   -   no.
> To: ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com
> Message-ID: <49954bce.80...@pileofstuff.org>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
> Make tty1 run a simple ncurses application similar to friendly-recovery,
> which would give you a set of options like "restart your computer", "log
> out", and "go back to your graphical session".  Then people can do
> c-a-f1 instead of c-a-b to get 99% of the value without the risk.
> Ubuntu users that really want a shell wouldn't be that inconvenienced,
> as they can still use c-a-f1 to c-a-f6.
>

I think this is a good idea.  My use case for C-A-B is when
full-screen games hang.  Windows users are used to C-A-D when
something bad happens and C-A-B is a natural response.  Your proposal
would be better but I have a suggestion.  Switching to a VT and
killing a hung application is not easy.  A full-screen process control
with a kill function (easier than top) would be a lot better than just
killing X.  The only remaining issue would be resetting desktop
resolution and the mouse pointer which often is disabled when a
full-screen application is killed.  My solution for the latter is to
run a full-screen application and exit normally which usually corrects
the problem.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Matthew Paul Thomas]

-BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
Hash: SHA1

Remco wrote on 12/02/09 22:33:
> 
> Every program that hangs but doesn't release grabs is a problem. You
> could certainly implement some kind of solution to that, but only
> after that solution is implemented, C-A-B or equivalents should be
> disabled. Not before.

The fact is, many things are easier to fix afterwards.
Particularly because that's the only time you'll find people
motivated enough to bother about it. If you were to need to fix
everything before-the-fact, nothing fundamental would ever get
fixed, simply because the people who can fix one thing are not
usually the same people who can fix another.

 -- Linus Torvalds 

> Every program that makes the system so slow that it becomes unusable
> is a problem. This can't be solved. Any buggy program can take so much
> CPU/RAM/IO that your mouse pointer moves only every 10 seconds and
> your key presses only register after that same time. Only a simple key
> press that kills the program can solve this.
>...

I have no doubt that it *could* be solved if people put their minds to
it. System Monitor (or a process-specific buset) could reduce the
priority of your other programs whenever it is running, be special-cased
by the window manager to ensure other windows can't hide it, and so on.
 In comparison, Ctrl Alt
Backspace is an appallingly bad way of stopping misbehaving programs.

Cheers
- --
Matthew Paul Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/
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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Thomas Jaeger]

Martin Pitt wrote:
> Thomas Jaeger [2009-02-12 17:16 -0500]:
>> This is not a healthy discussion.  We have people claiming that they
>> can't live without C-A-B
> 
> Nobody stops them from re-enabling it (to the contrary, there's a new
> tool "dontzap" which makes this very easy). Please keep in mind that
> we aren't discussing taking this away entirely, just changing the
> default.
This misses the point, though.  What has surfaced here, and I think
needs addressing is that C-A-B is not just used as a convenient way of
restarting the X server after recompiling it, but it's actually used as
a general-purpose something's-not-working-so-let's-kill-X key (this
might have been clear to you, but it actually surprised me).  This might
work for some people, but I find this a completely unacceptable solution
and I think we need to get to the bottom of those issues.

One thing that has been mentioned is how a process that requests an
infinite amount of memory can completely trash the system.  This is
definitely something we can get out of this discussion.  I'm not
familiar enough with what the kernel does, but I'm sure we could find
some more desktop-oriented kernel options that alleviate the problem
(deny requests for new memory earlier when we're low on memory, set a
hard limit on how much memory a process can request, maybe even a key
combination that kills the application that is currently using the most
memory).  I'm sure these kinds of issues have been discussed upstream
before.

> Also, please be aware of the fact that this is a *developer* list,
> who naturally has a differnent and more expert-oriented approach to
> using a system.
Yeah, this is why I thought I could get good descriptions of what
problems people are running into, but I guess they just don't care as
long as there's a quick way to zap X.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Thomas Jaeger]

Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> Remco wrote on 12/02/09 22:33:
>> Every program that hangs but doesn't release grabs is a problem. You
>> could certainly implement some kind of solution to that, but only
>> after that solution is implemented, C-A-B or equivalents should be
>> disabled. Not before.
> 
> The fact is, many things are easier to fix afterwards.
> Particularly because that's the only time you'll find people
> motivated enough to bother about it. If you were to need to fix
> everything before-the-fact, nothing fundamental would ever get
> fixed, simply because the people who can fix one thing are not
> usually the same people who can fix another.
> 
>  -- Linus Torvalds 

So true.  This is off-topic, but we've had the problem in bug 217908 [1]
for almost a year now, simply because the cairo folks are to nice to
expose bugs in the drivers.  And no surprises here, even after sending
patches to the upstream driver projects, three of them still haven't
fixed the issue.

[1] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/217908

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Thomas Jaeger]

Mike Jones wrote:
> It is unreasonable to expect even users who have programing experience to
> use the terminal for honestly much more than occasional scripts. I have
> absolutely no desire to C-A-F#, find the program that is giving me fits, and
> then kill it in the hopes it fixes my issue.
In order to fix bugs, we need people that are able and willing to track
down the issues.

> 
> 
>> I'm one of those users who would prefer that the C-A-B command be left
>> as it is, or be modified to allow the ability through some other
> interface:
>> such as twice successive.
>>
>> I have filed several bug reports about issues related to problems with
>> X, https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/289898 for example.
> This is a kernel bug.  I would be very surprised if C-A-B worked here.
> 
> 
> C-A-B does not work in that instance, you are correct. But since you seem to
> know so much about it, could you please provide a fix for me? I have been
> unable to figure out anything beyond what I reported already.
There's no useful information in that bug report.  What you need is a
dmesg from after the bug has happened if possible, or a backtrace if
it's a kernel panic (flashing leds).

See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies#Capturing%20OOPs and
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DebuggingSystemCrash .  You'll
probably need to forward the bug upstream once you've gathered the
necessary information, it doesn't look like anybody's working on it.

>> But the problem is still going to be there for that person from when they
>> originally filed the bug until the problem has been tracked down, until a
>> fix has been written, until its been tested to not break anything, until
> its
>> been patched to the package, until the package as been released, and
> finally
>> the package has been downloaded (and in the case of things like the
> kernal,
>> and graphics support) until the computer (or X) has been restarted.
> This is why we need to figure out if there's some sort of pattern behind
> the problems people are seeing.
> 
> I agree with John Moser. Allow the user to go back to work, and
> automatically file a bug report using the apport interface. I assume thats
> why apport exists, to catch crashes and report them when possible.
> Otherwise... why does it pop up on my screen whenever a program crashes..?

Except that apparently most of the issues that people are solving with
C-A-B have nothing to do with the X server.

> Thomas, do you mind if I ask why you seem so adamant that C-A-B stay
> disabled? If we change it to A-S-K the accidental activation problem has a
> (in my opinion much) lower risk, but the workaround still exists for when
> people need it to. Would changing to A-S-K be acceptable to you? Or is there
> another underlying issue?

A-S-K has always been there for people that need to do kernel debugging.
Nobody else should ever have to deal with it and neither should we rely
on C-A-B.  It's just a bad way of dealing with problems.

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Mike Jones]

Thomas,

Thank you for letting me know what additional information I needed to
provide. I will get it as soon as I have an opportunity. I really appreciate
the help.

As for the whole C-A-B issue... yes, honestly, dude, I wish that I never
had to use C-A-B. But I do. I report bugs when I'm reasonably sure its not
just me messing up, but I can't find everything. Nor do I have the time to
file a report for everything I encounter (I wish I did).

***   In order to fix bugs, we need people that are able and willing to
track
***   down the issues.

No.
Technically what you say is true. But realistically, it is not. It is
not a valid assumption that any given user X will ever file a bug report.
Yes, many users do, nearly all that I know personally... but to assume that
a specific user will do so is a fallacy.

And completely separate from that consideration: I ask again. What do
the users who do file a bug report, and who do have a legitimate problem,
and who do try to troubleshoot the issue as much as they can, but who
experience the same problem that is most easily worked around by calling
C-A-B do in the meantime, while they are waiting for  their bug to be fixed
or trying to fix it themselves?

You say that any user who reasonably could do all of those above things
will modify their configuration files.
I say that that is an unreasonable assumption. People can file reports
on behalf of other people, while the original person who experiences the
problem is still effectively SOL.
Whether it was intended to be a feature or not when it was first
implemented, many users consider that hot-key sequence to be a feature, not
a hack. The intended purpose for a operation in software is irreverent if a
user continually uses something for an operation which it was not originally
intended for. Either that new user defined purpose is appended to the
original intended use, or it replaces that intended use.

Arguing that C-A-B should be removed on the merits of it being
accidentally activated is a perfectly legitimate argument. I agree that it
HAS happened to me in the past. But I disagree that it should be completely
removed. I disagree that I should be forced to edit a configuration file to
restore the functionality (regardless of how trivially easy it is). Changing
the activation sequence is one thing. Removing the functionality from on the
fly access is entirely different.

Could we not compromise?



On Fri, Feb 13, 2009 at 4:49 PM, Thomas Jaeger  wrote:

> Mike Jones wrote:
> > It is unreasonable to expect even users who have programing experience to
> > use the terminal for honestly much more than occasional scripts. I have
> > absolutely no desire to C-A-F#, find the program that is giving me fits,
> and
> > then kill it in the hopes it fixes my issue.
> In order to fix bugs, we need people that are able and willing to track
> down the issues.
>
> >
> >
> >> I'm one of those users who would prefer that the C-A-B command be
> left
> >> as it is, or be modified to allow the ability through some other
> > interface:
> >> such as twice successive.
> >>
> >> I have filed several bug reports about issues related to problems
> with
> >> X, https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/289898 for example.
> > This is a kernel bug.  I would be very surprised if C-A-B worked here.
> >
> >
> > C-A-B does not work in that instance, you are correct. But since you seem
> to
> > know so much about it, could you please provide a fix for me? I have been
> > unable to figure out anything beyond what I reported already.
> There's no useful information in that bug report.  What you need is a
> dmesg from after the bug has happened if possible, or a backtrace if
> it's a kernel panic (flashing leds).
>
> See https://wiki.ubuntu.com/KernelTeamBugPolicies#Capturing%20OOPs and
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DebuggingSystemCrash .  You'll
> probably need to forward the bug upstream once you've gathered the
> necessary information, it doesn't look like anybody's working on it.
>
> >> But the problem is still going to be there for that person from when
> they
> >> originally filed the bug until the problem has been tracked down, until
> a
> >> fix has been written, until its been tested to not break anything, until
> > its
> >> been patched to the package, until the package as been released, and
> > finally
> >> the package has been downloaded (and in the case of things like the
> > kernal,
> >> and graphics support) until the computer (or X) has been restarted.
> > This is why we need to figure out if there's some sort of pattern behind
> > the problems people are seeing.
> >
> > I agree with John Moser. Allow the user to go back to work, and
> > automatically file a bug report using the apport interface. I assume
> thats
> > why apport exists, to catch crashes and report them when possible.
> > Otherwise... why does it pop up on my screen whenever a program
> crashes..?
>
> Except that apparently most o

Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

On 13/02/2009 Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> The fact is, many things are easier to fix afterwards.
> Particularly because that's the only time you'll find people
> motivated enough to bother about it. If you were to need to fix
> everything before-the-fact, nothing fundamental would ever get
> fixed, simply because the people who can fix one thing are not
> usually the same people who can fix another.
> 

If developers of a new technology are not motivated enough to make it 
usable (not "testable") why should one bother including it in a 
mainstream user-oriented distribution?

That said, I still don't understand why removing a functionality that 
does not harm anybody and that is really useful in some circumstances. I 
see this discussion will be pointless, though.

However,  I am also sure that MOST people I know will tell me that 
ubuntu is a dictatorship after discovering that they can't tell "hit 
CTRL+ALT+BACKSPACE" on the phone to their unexperienced friends.

I typically am the guy that persuades friends using linux that the new 
*DEFAULT* choices ubuntu makes in every release are good even though 
they look like evil. But this time I don't really have a justification.

V.



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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Scott Kitterman]

On Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:24:32 +0100 Vincenzo Ciancia  
wrote:
>I typically am the guy that persuades friends using linux that the new 
>*DEFAULT* choices ubuntu makes in every release are good even though 
>they look like evil. But this time I don't really have a justification.
>
Vincenzo,

You will recall that we've discussed excessive hostility on this list 
before.  Perhaps it is because English is not your first language, but evil 
is a very strong term.  If you will consult a dictionary and consider it, I 
think you will agree the term is excessive in this context.  

So far, I have exactly one poster this list in my killfile.  You are 
perilously close to being the second.  You will also recall that in the 
past I have agreed to volunteer my time and fixed a deficiency that was a 
problem for you.  If you want to have the opportunity for that to happen 
again you will really need to moderate your words.

Everyone:  

I think this thread has far outlived whatever usefullness it might have had 
and I'd suggest everyone just stop.  It's a few days before feature freeze 
and the plan for Jaunty isn't going to change.

If you want this to change in the future, you will need to have a fully 
baked plan for an alternative.  This is a good time to go work on that so 
that when the call for specs for Jaunty +1 comes out you will be ready.

Scott K

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

Scott Kitterman ha scritto:
> On Sat, 14 Feb 2009 09:24:32 +0100 Vincenzo Ciancia  
> wrote:
>> I typically am the guy that persuades friends using linux that the new 
>> *DEFAULT* choices ubuntu makes in every release are good even though 
>> they look like evil. But this time I don't really have a justification.
>>
> Vincenzo,
> 
> You will recall that we've discussed excessive hostility on this list 
> before.  Perhaps it is because English is not your first language, but evil 
> is a very strong term.  If you will consult a dictionary and consider it, I 
> think you will agree the term is excessive in this context.  
> 

Scott, I don't think this is the case for a killfile (YMMV of course). 
What I tried to summarise here is two opposite moods when defaults 
change radically: the one from the ubuntu users, who start saying "hey, 
we are getting like windows", "another one from ubuntu..." and so on, 
the one from the ubuntu enthusiast, like I am (but this is also valid 
for other operating system, see e.g. vista enthusiasts or macusers) who 
try to explain them the reasons for the change.

Now this time I don't really have an answer for two extremely important 
questions that these persons may ask: 1) how am I supposed to unlock a 
stuck compiz? and 2) how can I protect myself from fake login screens.

Question 2) is of vital importance because one may find himself as an 
user of a network of ubuntu-desktop-edition computers. The system 
administrator may be ignorant and not know about the change, but a 
default choice MUST NOT prevent an experienced user to protect himself 
from a script-kiddie in a GUI mood.

Why not getting constructive and do two things: 1) reply to question 2) 
and 2) reply to quest... ehm, no, post a rationale of the Good that this 
change will bring in. So that I will have an answer this time too?

For those who think I made the S/N ratio of the list worse: just post a 
reply to these two things and the signal will go up :)

> I think this thread has far outlived whatever usefullness it might have had 
> and I'd suggest everyone just stop.  It's a few days before feature freeze 
> and the plan for Jaunty isn't going to change.

I see, but did I miss the thread or why such big changes are not 
publicized in early stages? Announces of the planned changes or 
something like that? Is there some web page I should monitor that will 
explain the planned changes for jaunty+1? I may be just ignorant here, 
but would appreciate if big changes that may bring complaints were at 
least announced and discussed a bit in this list. If you just implement 
those, there will be complaints, which by a simple statistical argument 
will be concentrated in the very last phases of the testing process.

Regarding the change to intrepid I requested, and you even more kindly 
implemented: I spent some time writing the e-mail and testing (it was 
few, but I would have spent more time on that if needed as I did for 
many other issues). That was not for me, but for the community, and in 
particular because windows is being more and more used in environments 
such as the academia that were tipically tied to linux because e.g. 
superior tex-ing capabilities. If we get worse and worse in the fields 
where we are traditionally strong we will end like the Italian 
university (yes I am about to escape). Tex users are people we should 
not lose, and it's already difficult enough to fight against 
pre-installed windows, and the good tex editors and environments that 
are nowadays available on the platform.

I don't know why, but (not necessarily in your case) whenever an user 
takes time to convince a developer of a bad choice, and the developer 
gets convinced and improves the distribution, it looks like the latter 
did a favour to the former. I tend to think about this as cooperation.

Vincenzo



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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Mario Vukelic]

On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 16:18 +0100, Vincenzo Ciancia wrote:
> I see, but did I miss the thread or why such big changes are not 
> publicized in early stages?

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty ?


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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Vincenzo Ciancia]

Mario Vukelic ha scritto:
> On Sat, 2009-02-14 at 16:18 +0100, Vincenzo Ciancia wrote:
>> I see, but did I miss the thread or why such big changes are not 
>> publicized in early stages?
> 
> https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/jaunty ?
> 
> 

Fine, I did not know. Will look at the blueprints for jaunty+1. What I 
see from that page is the following:

1) Upstream implemented the change. That must have good reasons on their 
  side, and indeed lowers any argument against it.

2) However, nobody cared in the discussion about the problem of fake 
login screens. There is a sentence saying that "nobody needs to kill X 
on the mac" but how many computer labs with osx did you see in your 
life? And perhaps they even have a shortcut to safely get back to the 
login screen! So the argument would be incorrect. Surely the workgroup 
oriented windows versions (2k3 or something, it's a long time since I 
was a slave of microsoft slaves...) have one.

3) In my opinion, it is a small change, and as it may turn to be a 
security problem in computer labs, we are still in time to discuss this 
aspect, and we should.

4) I wonder where the proposal of keeping the button pressed for some 
seconds, or pressing it twice, ended. That would have been a damn good 
compromise!

5) I still see no good reason for this change except that it's 
"relatively easy to trigger this by mistake". I never did that and I 
have been using linux for 12 years. I even used rm by mistake when 
drunk. Yep, I was young then :)

Can someone tell me how will I protect myself from fake login screens in 
  multi-user ubuntu setups? Even my office machine is multi-user!

Vincenzo

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Remco]

On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Vincenzo Ciancia  wrote:
> Can someone tell me how will I protect myself from fake login screens in
>  multi-user ubuntu setups? Even my office machine is multi-user!

It took me a while to figure out what you meant by this, but yeah!
That's actually a pretty nasty way to steal passwords. Shouldn't the
login screen instruct you to press C-A-B before trying to log in?

Remco

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[Remco]

On Sun, Feb 15, 2009 at 12:47 AM, Remco  wrote:
> On Sat, Feb 14, 2009 at 4:56 PM, Vincenzo Ciancia  wrote:
>> Can someone tell me how will I protect myself from fake login screens in
>>  multi-user ubuntu setups? Even my office machine is multi-user!
>
> It took me a while to figure out what you meant by this, but yeah!
> That's actually a pretty nasty way to steal passwords. Shouldn't the
> login screen instruct you to press C-A-B before trying to log in?
>
> Remco
>

Sorry for posting the previous. Gmail sorted the mails by thread, so I
read this before the other discussion. Instead, the login screen could
instruct you to press Alt+SysRQ+K or any other key captured by the
kernel.

By the way, Alt+SysRQ+K doesn't do anything on my laptop?
Alt+SysRQ+REISUB does work, so what's that about? Could it have
something to do with that my VTs don't exist? (proprietary NVIDIA
driver issue)

Remco

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Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no.

[(``-_-´´) -- BUGabundo]

Olá Matthew e a todos.

On Friday 13 February 2009 18:27:06 Matthew Paul Thomas wrote:
> I have no doubt that it could be solved if people put their minds to
> it. System Monitor (or a process-specific buset) could reduce the
> priority of your other programs whenever it is running, be special-cased
> by the window manager to ensure other windows can't hide it, and so on.

There's AND:


Description: Auto Nice Daemon
 The auto nice daemon activates itself in certain intervals and renices jobs
 according to their priority and CPU usage. Jobs owned by root are left alone.
 Jobs are never increased in their priority.
 .
 The renice intervals can be adjusted as well as the default nice level and
 the activation intervals. A priority database stores user/group/job tuples
 along with their renice values for three CPU usage time ranges. Negative nice
 levels are interpreted as signals to be sent to a process, triggered by CPU
 usage; this way, Netscapes going berserk can be killed automatically. The
 strategy for searching the priority database can be configured.
 .
 AND also provides network-wide configuration files with host-specific
 sections, as well as wildcard/regexp support for commands in the priority
 database.

-- 
Hi, I'm BUGabundo, and I am Ubuntu (whyubuntu.com)
(``-_-´´)   http://LinuxNoDEI.BUGabundo.net
Linux user #443786GPG key 1024D/A1784EBB
My new micro-blog @ http://BUGabundo.net
ps. My emails tend to sound authority and aggressive. I'm sorry in advance. 
I'll try to be more assertive as time goes by...


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keeping informed onthefly (Re: Fwd: Is disabling ctrl-alt-backspace really such a good idea? - no. )

[Felipe Figueiredo]

Vincenzo Ciancia escreveu:
> I see, but did I miss the thread or why such big changes are not 
> publicized in early stages? Announces of the planned changes or 
> something like that? Is there some web page I should monitor that will 
> explain the planned changes for jaunty+1? I may be just ignorant here, 
> but would appreciate if big changes that may bring complaints were at 
> least announced and discussed a bit in this list. If you just implement 
> those, there will be complaints, which by a simple statistical argument 
> will be concentrated in the very last phases of the testing process.
>
>   
Most or all developer teams gather at periodic (weekly?) meetings in
IRC. The minutes are posted in -devel, and their respective pages. You
should subscribe to the apropriate lists, or launchpad project pages if
you want to keep yourself informed of status on the fly.

Vincenzo Ciancia escreveu:
> Can someone tell me how will I protect myself from fake login screens in 
>   multi-user ubuntu setups? Even my office machine is multi-user!
>
>   

As others said, more than once in this thread, the change is reversible.
There will be a package to install so you don't have to edit your xorg.conf.

regards
FF

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