alt-f2 doesn't work in gnome-shell

[Julien Olivier]

In GNOME shell, pressing ALT-F2 doesn't do anything. It used to popup a run dialog, and I'm pretty sur it is supposed to still do that, but doesn't.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: gnome-shell 3.1.90.1-0ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-10.16-generic-pae 3.0.4
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-10-generic-pae i686
ApportVersion: 1.22.1-0ubuntu2
Architecture: i386
Date: Fri Sep 9 16:06:56 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 10.04.1 LTS "Lucid Lynx" - Release i386 (20100816.1)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=fr:en
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 LANG=fr_FR.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: gnome-shell
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-08-12 (27 days ago)

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

A workaround is to open System Settings and click Keyboard. Switch to the Shortcuts tab and select System. Change "Show the run command prompt" to Alt+F2.

Launchers>Launch Terminal should also be Ctrl+Alt+T. I don't know why these two settings aren't pre-configured properly; I've actually spent a good amount of time trying to understand what's broken but I haven't been able to figure it out.

[Julien Olivier (julo)]

Thanks Jeremy for the quite obvious workaround... I didn't think this kind of shortcuts was configurable so I didn't think of lookup in the control center. Anyway, now it works for me.

[Dr Emixam (dr.emixam)]

The workaround is quite obvious and works but this should work out of the box…

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

This might have been fixed with gconf by now.

Move .gconf/apps/metacity somewhere else and see if your keyboard shortcuts work. If it does and you've verified that you don't have any important settings in that folder, you can delete it at your convenience.

[Jeremy Bícha (jbicha)]

I'm a bit closer to figuring this out and reported a new bug since this isn't gnome-shell's fault; it's compiz/unity. I'm marking this as a duplicate of that bug.

[Marc Gariépy (mgariepy)]

a more elegant way to remove the keybinding configuration is to run this command in a terminal:
$ gconftool-2 --recursive-unset /apps/metacity/global_keybindings

[Guilherme Rodrigues (gadr90)]

I installed 11.10 cleanly, and then gnome-shell from the Software Center.

Followed the workaround manually creating a shortcut.

[airtonix (airtonix-gmail)]

Still a problem in 12.04