Ctrl-keys does not work in gutsy

[Anders Schau Knatten]

Binary package hint: gnome-terminal

After upgrading to gutsy, my Ctrl-keys have stopped working in gnome-terminal. They work just fine in other aplications, like xterm and firefox. Some examples:
Ctrl-d : Nothing happens
Ctrl-s : Same as pressing enter
Ctrl-c : Same as pressing enter
Ctrl-w : A comma appears
etc.

The problem persists in all applications run within gnome-terminal. Examples:
Can not use Ctrl key in vim
Can not use Ctrl+d for logging out after ssh-ing to another box.

Other special characters, like Shift, Esc and AltGr works.

$ uname -a
Linux abel 2.6.22-14-generic #1 SMP Sun Oct 14 23:05:12 GMT 2007 i686 GNU/Linux

$ gnome-terminal --version
GNOME gnome-terminal 2.18.2

$ echo $LANG $GDM_LANG
en_US.UTF-8 en_US.UTF-8

Please tell me if you need any other information.

[Pedro Villavicencio (pedro)]

Thank you for your comments. This does not appear to be a bug report and we are closing it. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but it would make more sense to raise your question in the support tracker. https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu

[Tyler Rick (tyler.rick)]

FWIW, this seems like a bug report to me, one that affects gnome-terminal (only), as the reporter suggested (even if it isn't enough information to identify the underlying problem). Probably not one that affects many people, so I doubt it will get fixed soon, but when it does affect you, it's pretty frustrating not being able to use Ctrl-c to interrupt a ping command, for example... :)

I would report this in https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu instead, but I can't find any existing question and when I tried clicking "Convert to a question", it said:

"This bug cannot be converted into a question. This bug may be valid in other locations, or it is not valid in any locations. Only one location must be valid for a bug to be convertible to a question.... When a bug is made into a question, the bug's status is set to Invalid. The new question will be linked to the bug."

So do we have to reopen this bug to make it NOT Invalid first and THEN click "Convert to question"? I'm confused. Perhaps someone else knows how to convert this into a question?

This bug came up #3 BTW when I searched for: ubuntu gnome-terminal ctrl-c stopped working. It'd be a shame for that superior position to be a dead end.
________________________

Anyway, I'm experiencing the same problem myself under Jaunty, so here's what solved it for me in case it's helpful to someone else out there...

For me anyway, the problem seems occur only when I have 2 keyboard layouts installed ("USA" (Qwerty) and "USA Dvorak"). (Dvorak is my primary layout.) When I remove Qwerty from the list of installed layouts, this problem goes away.

This problem also does NOT occur when I add the layouts such that they are in this order:
USA Dvorak
USA

However, as soon as I remove USA Dvorak and add it again to the bottom of the list and then switch to that layout, the behavior returns:
USA
USA Dvorak

This is the behavior I observe:

My bash/readline Ctrl-key shortcuts get switched around when using gnome-terminal. Some examples (similar to Anders's but different, probably because he had a different 2nd layout installed than I have):

Ctrl-a : works as expected, goes to beginning-of-line
Ctrl-d : expect it to log out of current shell, but instead it acts like backspace (like Ctrl-h or Backspace should do)
Ctrl-c : expect it to interrupt, but instead does tab-completion (like Ctrl-i or Tab should do)
Ctrl-l : expect it to clear screen, but shows the previous command in history (like Ctrl-p or Up should do)
Ctrl-s : A ; (semicolon) appears
Ctrl-w : A , (comma) appears

# Relevant excerpts from bind -p:
> bind -p
"\C-a": beginning-of-line
"\C-h": backward-delete-char
"\C-i": complete
"\C-p": previous-history
"\C-l": clear-screen

a is the same in Qwerty and Dvorak, so that explains Ctrl-a still working. Pressing the key that is a D in Qwerty produces (or is SUPPOSED to produce, at ALL times) an H when using the Dvorak layout, but that appears to not be the case when Ctrl is held down. (I=C, P=L, ;=S, ...)

So it appears that while Ctrl is held down, it silently switches the keyboard layout to Qwerty, but when it is released, it goes back to Dvorak. Can anyone explain why this would be?

Looking in Keyb...

[Alex Dehnert (adehnert)]

This feels like the same bug as https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/204202. (Not that that is really likely to help anyone.)

[Kai Webber (kai11)]

Yes, this bug is very similar to https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/gnome-terminal/+bug/204202
In another thread workaround was suggested - you have to switch keyboard layout order and move USA layout to the first position. It works for my karmic with USA and Russian layouts.