On 08/20/2012 12:55 PM, Aaron Konstam wrote:
It is hard to know where to start with the problems with the use of the SysReg key.. Since acording to the Wikipedia notes in order to get these Magic SysReg features to work you have tp add the Ctrl button. So to reboot you would have to use the Ctrl+Alt+SysReg+ b button. On my workstation Keyboard this is nearly impossible to do because of the position of the SysReg key in the upper right corner of the keyboard. On my laptop where I can hit the keys the function fails to work. Without the Ctrl all you get is screen shots which I do get.
With the alternate approach of: echo key > /proc/sysreq-trigger the reboot works but I can't detect anything else working.
So how does one use these magic keys ?
You have to enable the sysrq key in /etc/sysctl.conf: kernel.sysrq = 1
In non-graphical mode it's just Alt+SysRq (not Ctrl, and not Alt+Ctrl), but the GUI can choose to ignore the combination - there used to be some X keyboard setting you could set globally, but it doesn't work anymore. I think there's some workaround for gnome, but I never did figure out how to make it work right in XFCE.
Lastly, on the laptop the SysRq key might only be usable with Fn modifier (Ctrl+Alt+Fn+SysRq+...), though Alt+PrintScreen has worked for me on all laptops I've tried (in text mode)