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How can I disable the virtual-terminal-switching shortcut keys in X?

rated 0 times [ 1] [ 0] / answers: 1 / hits: 2732 / 3 Years ago, tue, october 12, 2021, 11:16:25

On earlier versions of Ubuntu, the AltF☒ and Alt⇆ shortcut keys for switching between virtual terminals seem to have been disabled under X Windows, so it wasn't possible to trigger them accidentally.

I'm now using Ubuntu 16.04 with Cinnamon desktop environment, and the shortcuts are enabled even under X Windows.

I frequently trigger them accidentally while trying to access menu items or to go forwards/backwards in a web browser.

How can I disable these virtual terminal shortcut keys, or replace them with the versions that require Ctrl (e.g. CtrlAltF1 instead of just AltF1)?

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(I've found several older answers that suggest a custom xmodmap, but this seems to have no effect for me.)

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ongdiligenc

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4 Years ago

answered 3 Years ago zombieptu · Accepted Answer

This thread at Unix stackexchange helped me figure out a temporary one-off solution:

# This command removes all the lines that look like:

#    alt keycode 123 = Console_1'

# ... with no additional modifiers

$ sudo dumpkeys | grep -Pv '^s+alt(gr)?s+keycodes+d+s+=s+(Console_|Incr_Console|Decr_Console)'|sudo loadkeys

It seems that Ubuntu 16.04's console-setup package stores its cached keymap at /etc/console-setup/cached.kmap.gz.

But I can't figure out what program generates this "cache" in the first place. Any ideas? All I can tell is that re-running dpkg-reconfigure console-setup console-setup-linux triggers its regeneration.