Unable to C-a in -nographic if -serial telnet

[Dario Niedermann]

qemu-system-i386 (version 2.6.1, running on Linux/x86_64) started with:

qemu-system-i386 -m 64M -machine type=pc -rtc base=localtime,clock=host -nographic -serial telnet:127.0.0.1:1234,server,nowait -net nic,model=ne2k_pci -net user,hostfwd=tcp:127.0.0.1:2200-:22,tftp=/

does not accept the escape key (C-a) to perform functions such as switching from monitor to console. Verified both in GNU screen and in the Linux console.

If '-serial telnet:127.0.0.1:1234,server,nowait' is removed from the command line, the escape key is accepted (and Qemu doesn't enter the monitor immediately).

[Thomas Huth (th-huth)]

Well, with your "-serial" setup, you've put the guest serial console on the telnet port, so there is nothing to switch on the host console here via the CTRL-a c key combination, i.e. this is the expected behavior. What exactly were you trying to do here? Access the serial console via two ways, one time via telnet and one time via the host console? AFAIK that's not possible.

[Dario Niedermann (dnied)]

With '-serial telnet' I directed the serial port to telnet, not the console (I call "console" the VGA tty qemu would show without the -nographic option).

[Thomas Huth (th-huth)]

Ah, ok, so you want to have the VGA output on the host console? Try the "-display curses" option for that.

[Dario Niedermann (dnied)]

I tried it, but it doesn't really work well. Aside from showing 2 cursors, the real problem is that the keymap is all messed up in the guest (whereas it's perfect in Qemu's VGA monitor).