Re: Lee's Impeccable Guide to Consoles

[Dave Mielke <dave@mielke.cc>]

[quoted lines by Lee Maschmeyer on May 9, 2003, at 10:52]

Hi:

>there's a
>function called Last_Console which flipflops between the two most
>recently viewed consoles. This one is assigned to a key (code 84) I
>don't seem to have on my keyboard, so I had to assign it by editing my
>keymap file.

Key code 84 is an odd key code for the System Request (SysRq) key which the
BIOS generates when either alt (left alt) or altgr (right alt) is pressed
together with the Print Screen (PrintScrn) key (which normally is key code 99).
The Linux kernel I'm currently using, 2.4.18, no longer seems to pass this
special BIOS quirk through. The theoretical addition to the key map
to get Last_Console back is:

    alt keycode 99 = Last_Console
    altgr keycode 99 = Last_Console

Even this doesn't work, though. The keyboard really does send out a totally
different scan code for the Print Screen key when either of the alt keys is
pressed, and, for whatever reason, Linux no longer seems to be handling that
scan code.

>If anybody wants to try doing this with programming something like
>2-24, be my guest. I had trouble editing one or both of these files and
>hosed my system to the point my boss had to bail me out, so I'm not
>touching anything. <Grin>

The loop as supplied by RedHat is:

   for i in 2 3 4 5 6; do
     > /dev/tty$i
  done

The general loop probably should be:

   for device in /dev/tty[0-9]*; do
     > $device
  done

>I didn't fool with the range vc/1-vc/11. I don't know
>what these are, but adding just the tty lines works for me.

The vc/ devices are for the same ttys but when devfs is being used. It'd be
correct to add the extra lines for vc/12-24 as well.

>but every time I start a new shell the screen goes back to 25
>lines. 

That probably means that you have a .bashrc file which sets the environment
variable LINES to 25. That file shouldn't be doing this sort of thing.

>I can paste between consoles using brltty, but the lack of feedback when
>blocking the text to be copied makes things a tad less than ideal.

BRLTTY generates tone sequences on the PC speaker when blocking the text.  
Check (in BRLTTY's preferences menu) to see if "Alert Tunes" is turned on.

-- 
Dave Mielke           | 2213 Fox Crescent | I believe that the Bible is the
Phone: 1-613-726-0014 | Ottawa, Ontario   | Word of God. Please contact me
EMail: dave@mielke.cc | Canada  K2A 1H7   | if you're concerned about Hell.
http://familyradio.com/                   | http://mielke.cc/bible/