Good evening, Everyone.

I accidentally ran /usr/local/samba/sbin/mount.cifs //NoThought/public /mnt/NoMind -o username=blank,password=blank && emelfm /mnt/NoMind as root! I copied this command from a user's history to run and forgot to take the emelfm part out! I would never run emelfm, or hardly anything else for that matter, as root.

Immediately after this I scrolled to the the next desktop with the mouse wheel to take look at another window. I was scrolling for a while when I realized the desktop was not switching. Refer back to this thread, if you would be so kind:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...taches-616660/

In general, I discovered that when I use screen, doing anything with screen would stop me from using mouse and keyboard commands of any kind, unless I want to just scroll through the fluxbox desktops with my mouse over the system toolbar. This goes for any command that begins with CTRL in screen. Also, if you accidentally do a screen action anywhere in fluxbox, you won't be able to use mouse or keyboard commands.

The only way to restore the functionality is by pressing ESC.

After running that command as root I couldn't switch desktops, and then I remembered those other computers. I pressed ESC, and I was able to do keyboard and mouse commands again.

I press CTRL+A A in a window-less desktop, and I lose keyboard and mouse. I press ESC, the functionality returns.

So, what is responsible?
Seems like Emelfm as root or perhaps mount.cifs is the culprit. Maybe it's me using && to only execute the latter upon success. I don't think I used that shell function as root yet on this install.

I know this happened only after I ran that command as root, because about 10 hours before that I was using screen and having a great time. I was doing things that I knew would result in mouse and keyboard disablement in my troubled slackware 11 boxes running fluxbox, and it was working fine. I tested this computer specifically for the bug, and it wasn't there until that command was ran as root.

Just a heads up, in case anyone else has this problem. Solutions other than pressing ESC are welcome, though.

Thanks,

I was pretty tired when I wrote the above, but I forgot to mention that I am pretty sure the mount.cifs utility isn't responsible, because I used it before this happened without an issue and on the Slackware 11 boxes I had this issue before I was introduced to mount.cifs.

For anyone tired of ^a causing the aforementioned problems, try placing this in your ~/.screenrc file:

escape ^Oo

Now you can use ^o instead of ^a. ^a still causes problems, but now you won't have to ever use that combination if it's causing you problems like it causes me problems.

^ means CTRL