Shortcut for tty not working

Hello everyone,

I noticed that the Shortcut for tty1 etc is not working on my system. When i press CTRL+ALT+F1 or F2 or F3 nothing happens under Gnome. I tried the same with the same machine and same keyboard on Debian (its a dualboot) and there it worked. I can change to tty by typing sudo chvt 3 into a terminal (under Manjaro(GNOME) but it would be nice to be able to use the default shortcut. I dont find any shortcut for that under settings> keyboard by the way. Any Ideas?

Thanks for help,

Pascal

Manjaro Linux use the same tty activation like every other Linux - so you are looking at some local issue.

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Hi @Pascal, and welcome!

Have you tried a different keyboard on that system?

Are you using X11 or Wayland?

Maybe this helps:

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I have tried a different keyboard. Same problem. Im using Wayland as default.

Just speculation:
I have tried to read up on the problem and found this in a (german) Arch Linux forum - maybe it helps.
The solution was something about a changed BIOS setting in the end
(apparently it changed on it’s own …)
but immediate workaround was the Fn key was locked in the wrong position.
(unstick it with Fn+ESC)

CTRL Alt [F1-F7] ohne Funktion - forum.archlinux.de

Run it through translate.google.com if you can’t read german.

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By the way: I can change to tty by writing in a terminal “ sudo chvt 3”. Then it changes to tty.

And i can go back to gui/gnome desktop by writing in the tty then “sudo chvt 1”.

So i guess the ttys are working but not the shortcuts?

So am I.

While my preferred desktop is Plasma - I have occasionally tested Gnome - before switching to Plasma I was a Gnome user (not the garden type gnome :grin:) and I have never had such issues.

The old keyboard i am using at the moment has no fn key. I dont find any option in the bios/uefi about the f-keys disabled. And remember the keys work under debian on the same machine,same keyboard. and debian uses of course the same uefi settings. so i think it must be a problem in the settings of gnome?

I just found out this: When i type in a terminal the following: sudo chvt 3 it changes to tty 3.

sudo chvt 1 brings me back to the login screen.

sudo chvt 2 does nothing. I think thats because i am already there with my graphical gnome session.

BUT, when i press ALT+F4 or ALT+F5 in the tty 3 session i can change to tty4 or tty5.

Any clues?

This is unlikely to be Gnome specific - the change to TTY is (as far as I know) on a different level - not a function of whatever graphical environment.

Can you boot a Manjaro ISO from USB (the one you installed from, for instance)?
Test it there.

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This behavior in the tty is normal — the Ctrl key is not needed there. However, there were a few reports quite a while ago regarding something in GNOME — or possibly a GNOME extension — which hijacked one of the Ctrl keys for itself.

It was too long ago, so I’m afraid I don’t have any links, but you could try the forum’s built-in search engine to find the pertinent threads.

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I booted from a USB Stick with Ventoy with and Manjaro on it. And there it works!

CTRL+ALT+F1 = Back to the graphical login screen

CTRL+ALT+F2= I think its the current GNOME Session because nothing happens.

CTRL+ALT+F3= tty3 opens up

CTRL+ALT+F4= tty4 opens up

CTRL+ALT+F5= tty5 opens up

CTRL+ALT+F6= tty6 open up

F7,F8 and so on do nothing. So its not the keyboard! I use ArcMenu to change GNOME! I used ArcMenu to change the normal Style of GNOME to a more Windows-like taskbar and menu. Can this be the cause? Like, ArcMenu usingthe keys?

This is normal, although tty12 should be functional as a (read-only) system logging console — I do not know whether it’s enabled by default, but it’s easy to set up if it isn’t.

Either way, this brings us back to the hijacking of your Ctrl key(s) by a GNOME extension. :thinking:

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I think that could be the right track, Aragorn. Some extension is using it.

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You have 2 of them :wink: leftCTRL and rightCTRL
Did you test both ?

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live in Germany and use a german keyboard layout. I tested Ctrl Strg (Left) and Strg (Right) and Alt and Alt Gr. Didnt work.

Then you would want to find the extension which perhaps has hijacked both of the CTRL (STRG on german keyboard) keys.
… or perhaps it is the ALT key? :man_shrugging:

I know I said:

but I had the default Gnome in mind.
Extensions can introduce some problems sometimes.
(my experience from way back when and one of the reasons I do not use Gnome)

Another possibility would be to create an additional user account and check whether it works when logged in there, as it is in it’s fresh, unaltered, default state.

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What extensions are you running?

gsettings get org.gnome.shell enabled-extensions

You can also toggle them all off and on to help troubleshoot.

gsettings set org.gnome.shell disable-user-extensions true

(And false to re-enable.)

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I created a new user account. And there it worked!

I turned all GNOME Extensions off in the account who has the problem. Like Molski said via the terminal command. problem still exists.

Did you log out and back in again after doing that?