Cfxtrjtrk

Trying out Ubuntu Intrepid, I have discovered that RightAlt+F1 doesn't take me to tty13.

I've exhaustively tried every option presented to me in dpkg-reconfigure console-setup, the best I've been able to manage thus far has been to have both Alt keys behave the same (LeftAlt+F1 and RightAlt+F1 both going to tty1).

Please note that using GNU screen is not considered a valid response to the question - this is specifically about how to get the keyboard to behave properly with multiple consoles under Ubuntu. The crazy thing is that every other distro I've tried just handles this correctly, including Debian Lenny.

After a lot of attempts to fix this various ways, I finally figured out how to use dumpkeys and loadkeys to modify the kernel's "keyboard translation table". Here are the loadkeys strings to set RightAlt+F1 through RightAlt+F12 to their respective offsets from tty12:

altgr   keycode  59 = Console_13

altgr   keycode  60 = Console_14

altgr   keycode  61 = Console_15

altgr   keycode  62 = Console_16

altgr   keycode  63 = Console_17

altgr   keycode  64 = Console_18

altgr   keycode  65 = Console_19

altgr   keycode  66 = Console_20

altgr   keycode  67 = Console_21

altgr   keycode  68 = Console_22

altgr   keycode  87 = Console_23

altgr   keycode  88 = Console_24

Why Ubuntu doesn't include this in the default setup remains a mystery. :)

On most systems, if you are at a text console, you can use Alt + the arrow keys to move to next and previous console.

In Debian, I would just edit /etc/inittab, but Ubuntu uses Upstart.

Apparently, you're supposed to edit /etc/default/console-setup and set the ACTIVE_CONSOLES variable to be /dev/tty[1-13] in your case.

Before changing this, Right-Alt + Ctrl + F1 would bring me to tty1. Now, I just get a blank screen that I can't do anything on. I also had to manually copy the file /etc/event.d/tty1 to /etc/event.d/tty13 and change the settings inside appropriately.

I can't seem to get it to work.

shrug

There's a nice program called chvt that takes you to another virtual console. (e.g. 'sudo chvt 1' would pop me right out of X, right now.) It's a bit obnoxious in that X drivers don't always like vt-switching. On the other hand, it's saved me more than once when X has gotten wedged. You might also want to look at a program called "open" which opens a new virtual terminal.

...But if your problem is really that you want more terminals, what I'd really recommend is to look into screen. It does all kinds of nifty things. Like being able to ssh in and connect to the same session you worked on locally, in what I think of as "multiplayer".. (well, you can be attached to the same (backend-) session from multiple frontends.) It kicks ass. I use it every day at work, where I have a very long-running session on one of the anarchic dev-servers.

As for your actual reported problem, well.. hmm.. how's your keyboard configured? Does it work with some more 'popular' keymap?

Are you running X? If so, check your Gnome or KDE keyboard shortcuts to make sure that this isn't bound to something else.

If you're not using X, then why not just use "screen" for console / shell management? That's a much more elegant solution than relying on Linux's multiple consoles. man screen