[SOLVED] Controlling availability of FN1-FN6 consoles, error and status messages

JZL240I-U · 07-11-2018, 03:18 AM

This is on openSUSE.

I recently noticed that the <Ctrl><Alt> FN2-FN6 consoles are not anymore available after boot. Same for the error and status messages on <Ctrl><Alt> FN10 (besides the boot Messages on <Ctrl><Alt> FN1).

Does anybody know whether those are controlled by a config file or some such? An activation as early as possible during boot would be my preferred aim. And how could I activate the function keys "by hand" after booting?

Thanks for any answers, hints, suggestions ...

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Keruskerfuerst · 07-11-2018, 11:41 PM

What version are you using?
Opensuse Leap 15.0 or other?

JZL240I-U · 07-12-2018, 01:03 AM

Ups, sorry, tumbleweed.

Keruskerfuerst · 07-12-2018, 01:20 AM

I am using Leap 15.0 and this problem does not exist there.

JZL240I-U · 07-12-2018, 01:56 AM

Okay, but how is this feature controlled anyway? How to switch on/off the terminals or send messages to one of them?

ondoho · 07-12-2018, 03:20 AM

i recently saw a thread here where it had sth to do with the proprietary nvidia driver...

JZL240I-U · 07-12-2018, 03:22 AM

I use AMD graphic cards and their open source driver(s)...

Keruskerfuerst · 07-12-2018, 12:09 PM

Can you test, which character is printed on console, when you hit CTRL+ALT+FN ?

ondoho · 07-13-2018, 01:38 AM

^ i think you meant CTRL+ALT+Fn, where n is a number between 1 and 12 (for a laptop user this might be confusing otherwise).

JZL240I-U · 07-13-2018, 02:06 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Keruskerfuerst

Can you test, which character is printed on console, when you hit CTRL+ALT+FN ?

How would I do that? There are no symbols to read on the screen...

@ondoho Thanks, understood.

ondoho · 07-13-2018, 02:56 AM

^ so that means it doesn't output anything to console.
what _exactly_ is happening? does it simply stay on the tty running Xorg, or does the screen go black or something?
the latter would suggest a graphical issue. let's see:
https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch...h+tty+consoles
the fedora ask looks relevant.

or maybe the key combo has really changed?
https://www.startpage.com/do/dsearch...ith+ctrl+alt+f

JZL240I-U · 07-14-2018, 11:41 AM

Well, I'll be ... something.

I used your links for inspiration and did from memory

Code:

me@PC:~> ps ax | grep tty
 1833 tty1     Ss+    0:00 /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear tty1 linux
 1872 tty7     Ssl+   0:06 /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp -auth /run/sddm/{c8be8a29-99d5-49f6-8156-1ac2f207579e} -background none -noreset -displayfd 17 -seat seat0 vt7
 4131 tty2     Ss+    0:00 /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear tty2 linux
 5994 pts/0    S+     0:00 grep --color=auto tty
me@PC:~> sudo service tty3 restart
[sudo] Passwort für root: 
service: no such service tty3

As expected, tty1 + tty2 had a login prompt and tty7 the graphic-screen. The rest of the screens <CTRL><ALt><Fn> were simply empty and black with only the cursor blinking.

Then I dug some more in your links and after 5 minutes without any other commands in console I ran again:

Code:

me@PC:~> ps aux | grep tty
root      1833  0.0  0.0   4924   824 tty1     Ss+  18:15   0:00 /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear tty1 linux
root      1872  7.8  0.9 961216 113068 tty7    Ssl+ 18:15   0:47 /usr/bin/X -nolisten tcp -auth /run/sddm/{c8be8a29-99d5-49f6-8156-1ac2f207579e} -background none -noreset -displayfd 17 -seat seat0 vt7
root      4131  0.0  0.0   4924   832 tty2     Ss+  18:16   0:00 /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear tty2 linux
root      7938  0.0  0.0   4924   716 tty3     Ss+  18:17   0:00 /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear tty3 linux
root      8105  0.0  0.0   4924   832 tty4     Ss+  18:17   0:00 /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear tty4 linux
root      8181  0.0  0.0   4924   820 tty5     Ss+  18:17   0:00 /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear tty5 linux
root      8358  0.0  0.0   4924   792 tty6     Ss+  18:17   0:00 /sbin/agetty -o -p -- \u --noclear tty6 linux
me 21308  0.0  0.0   8724   904 pts/0    S+   18:25   0:00 grep --color=auto tty
me@PC:~>

And they are really and truly there. Why? How?

Okay I ran an update yesterday, maybe that is it.

Still the one big question remains: how does this work? How can I do it if necessary all by myself (on console)? Is there a configuration available? Can this be enabled for emergency mode? Any ideas would be appreciated very much

.

JZL240I-U · 07-19-2018, 11:23 AM

Okay, I have several more installations of tumbleweed. Next one shows for less than a second

Code:

Failed to set up virtual console.
See systemctl status systemd-vconsole-setup.service for details.

And that gives

Code:

sudo systemctl status systemd-vconsole-setup.service
[sudo] Passwort for root: 
● systemd-vconsole-setup.service - Setup Virtual Console
   Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/systemd-vconsole-setup.service; static; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: inactive (dead) since Thu 2018-07-19 18:06:49 CEST; 1min 2s ago
     Docs: man:systemd-vconsole-setup.service(8)
           man:vconsole.conf(5)
 Main PID: 657 (code=exited, status=0/SUCCESS)

Jul 19 18:06:49 PC systemd[1]: Starting Setup Virtual Console...
Jul 19 18:06:49 PC systemd[1]: Started Setup Virtual Console.

After that the consoles are running...

How... what... ahmmm...

Suggestions?

ondoho · 08-01-2018, 03:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JZL240I-U

Code:

Failed to set up virtual console.
...

After that the consoles are running...

Suggestions?

so it just takes a while for them to load? is that it?

as previously, it often helps to search the error message.
how about linux failed to set up virtual console? or replace linux with opensuse, or systemd etc.

Quote:

Originally Posted by JZL240I-U

how does this work? How can I do it if necessary all by myself (on console)? Is there a configuration available? Can this be enabled for emergency mode?

as already hinted, systemd seems to take care of these things on most modern distributions.
i will refer you to the archwiki and

Code:

man logind.conf

JZL240I-U · 09-10-2018, 12:46 PM

Sorry to be back only now.

And: Thanks for the links

.

Sometimes one (or at least I) is sort of blocked. Neither sensible questions nor obvious actions come to mind. You pointed me in the right direction and my initial disorientation and the correlated problems are (re)solved and the underlying technical steps are clear. Ahmm, thank you

. Marking this thread as solved.