Emergency exit from X to tty1

[Walter Dnes]

  Here's a useful hint I picked up on the Gentoo mailing list.  This is
for those occasions when you get stuck in X, with X hogging the
keyboard, and refusing to let you exit to textmode.  With a bit of
setup, you can use the big "Power" button (YES!!! the "ON/OFF" button)
to force a jump to textmode tty1.  Here are the steps...

as root
cd /usr/src/linux
make menuconfig
  Power management options (ACPI, APM)  --->
    [*] Power Management support
        ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) Support
          [*] ACPI Support
          <*>   Button

Compile and re-boot into new kernel

emerge acpi
(That's for Gentoo; other distros use apt-get/yum/rpm/whatever)

change the uncommented lines in /etc/acpi/events/default to read
event=.*
action=chvt 1

execute the two commands...
/etc/init.d/acpid start     (to start acpid now)
rc-update add acpid default (to automatically start acpid at future bootups)

  Notes:
  - When testing, I suggest executing "sync" as a precaution, just
    before pressing the "big" power button.

  - PCs also have a smaller power button which is hard-wired to shutdown
    or re-boot.  Do *NOT* press that button.

  - After editing /etc/acpi/events/default run the command
/etc/init.d/acpid restart
    to force acpid to read in the new config

  It was scarey at first, pressing the power button.  Just like the
feeling I had a dozen years ago when I first pressed {CTL-ALT-DEL} in
Windows95, not to reboot but to bring up the task manager.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes-SLHPyeZ9y/tg9hUCZPvPmw at public.gmane.org>
I'm not repeating myself
I'm an X Window user...  I'm an ex-Windows-user
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