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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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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