I recently tested pressing PrintScreen inside several uncommonly-used text editors while running in console mode. The key seems to make a few of them, including NLED by Evan Weaver, become unresponsive forever. Vim and Nano are unaffected though.
P.S. I will soon be forwarding this bug upstream to http://bugs.debian.org/console-data ** Description changed: Binary package hint: console-data - On Ubuntu 8.04, in console mode, the PrintScreen key sends SIGQUIT to - the running application. Depending which application you are running, - this may cause it to dump core. So this single wrong keystroke can - cause data loss. Most text editors are unaffected, but most other apps - are. + On Ubuntu 8.04, in console mode, the PrintScreen key sends ^\ which + sends SIGQUIT to the running application. Depending which application + you are running, this may cause it to dump core. So this single wrong + keystroke can cause data loss. Most text editors are unaffected, but + most other apps are affected. This problem has affected most Linux PCs for almost a decade now, but AFAICT nobody has ever filed a proper bug report about it with the kernel folks or with Ubuntu. People have complained on mailing lists though. == Steps to repro == 1. Press Control+Alt+F1 2. Log in 3. Do one of the following: a) type "sudo aptitude" then spend fifteen minutes looking through the list of packages and picking what you want, OR b) start up the "lynx" browser then spend 15 minutes editing a Wikipedia article 4. In the middle of step 3, accidentally press the Print Screen key on your keyboard. == What happens == * When you press PrtSc, the kernel sends the ^\ (Control-Backslash) key combination to the terminal. This is by design, but it is a bad design. It causes data loss. * ^\ sends a SIGQUIT signal, causing the application to immediately abort and dump core. == What should have happened == * When you press PrtSc, the kernel should not send ^\ -- it should either send a different key combination, or send nothing at all. -- PrintScreen key causes many apps to suddenly die if you are running in Linux text mode https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/279973 You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list [email protected] https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs
