metacity claims Alt+T for open terminal, due to spelling mistake in gconf defaults file

[Max Bowsher]

Binary package hint: gnome-terminal

Since the upgrade from 2.29.1-0ubuntu2 to 2.29.6-0ubuntu1, gnome-terminal has stopped honouring the fact that I have unchecked the "Enable menu access keys" setting, and is intercepting Alt+(key) sequences that I have been using to control programs such as screen and irssi - for example, Alt+T.

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Feb 20 13:31:26 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 10.04
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
Package: gnome-terminal 2.29.6-0ubuntu1
ProcEnviron:
 LC_COLLATE=C
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_GB.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.32-13.18-generic
SourcePackage: gnome-terminal
Uname: Linux 2.6.32-13-generic x86_64

[Max Bowsher (maxb)]

OK, turns out this isn't gnome-terminal's fault at all, but is due to a recent change in the metacity package, hijacking Alt+T for its own purposes.

[Max Bowsher (maxb)]

Ah, and now I see why. The gconf-defaults file shipped by metacity-common spells the control key <Ctrl>, when it should be <Control>, and somehow compiz ends up omitting it and processing the rest of the string as just <Alt>T

[Sitsofe Wheeler (sitsofe)]

I was just about to file a wishlist bug requesting that ctrl-alt-t be bound by default to start a terminal (as things like ChromeOS and Xandros are binding it that way so it's turning into a defacto standard) when I found that this is in fact already the case. It also appears that this particular bug has been fixed (from the metacity changelog):

metacity (1:2.28.1-0ubuntu2) lucid; urgency=low

  * debian/metacity-common.gconf-defaults: Set Ctrl+Alt+T to launch
    a terminal.

 -- Martin Pitt <martin.pitt@> Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:50:16 +0100

[Mitch Towner (kermiac)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 529852, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Please continue to report any other bugs you may find.

As noted in bug 529852, the way to resolve this issue for those already effected by it is to run "gconftool -u /apps/metacity/global_keybindings/run_command_terminal" then restart the session for the updated keybinding - <Control><Alt>T to stick.