[SOLVED] getty bug

If you go to login (maybe just first time) on pure (non-X/-Wayland) terminal and accidentally press <PgDn/Up> first, the cursor goes down (or up?) a line and input is halted. You have to go to another terminal and kill getty. I emailed the person mentioned in the getty manpage but the email was undeliverable.

I confirm such a bit strange behaviour but after some seconds (less than 10) everything is OK without killing getty.

When I try it, the cursor stays where it is and you can continue to enter characters, but when you press enter you get a short delay and /var/log/secure shows this:
agetty[2483]: tty2: invalid character 0x1b in login name

ctrl-u should clear all entered input,so there should be no need to console switch and kill the getty process.

ctrl-u (just like backspacing repeatedly) will result in the cursor being mispositioned into the login prompt, but that's just a cosmetic issue and it won't prevent login.

Clearly agetty is not handling/filtering out the escape sequence the pgup/down generate.

If all else fails altgr-sysrq k will save the day (but never do it on tty1!)

Originally Posted by GazL If all else fails altgr-sysrq k will save the day (but never do it on tty1!)

What is altgr?

Originally Posted by dchmelik What is altgr?

The rightmost alt key on your keyboard, typically labelled: "Alt Gr" on a PC.

You need to keep the alt-gr depressed while pressing sysrq then 'k'


Google "Magic sysrq" if you want to know more.

Originally Posted by GazL The rightmost alt key on your keyboard, typically labelled: "Alt Gr" on a PC.

I've only seen them labelled Alt.

Is there any other way to contact the getty programmer?

Originally Posted by dchmelik I've only seen them labelled Alt. Is there any other way to contact the getty programmer?

Perhaps it depends on the country layout. With GB they're usually 'Alt Gr'


agetty is part of util-linux which has a github repo. You could go over there and log an "issue", though I doubt an issue like this will get a very high-priority on their todo list.