Re: Magic Alt-SysRq change in 2.6.18-rc1

H. Peter Anvin
2006-07-10T01:12:52Z

Alan Stern wrote:
> Dmitry:
>
> Are you the right person to handle changes in the behavior of Alt-SysRq?
>
> Before 2.6.18-rc1, I used to be able to use it as follows:
>
> Press and hold an Alt key,
> Press and hold the SysRq key,
> Release the Alt key,
> Press and release some hot key like S or T or 7,
> Repeat the previous step as many times as desired,
> Release the SysRq key.
>
> This scheme doesn't work any more, or if it does, the timing requirements
> are now much stricter. In practice I have to hold down all three keys at
> the same time; I can't release the Alt key before pressing the hot key.
>
> This makes thinks very awkward on my laptop machine. Its keyboard
> controller doesn't seem to like having three keys pressed simultaneously.
> Instead of the expected hotkey behavior, I usually got an error message
> from atkbd warning about too many keys being pressed. Getting it to work
> as desired is hit-and-miss.
>
> I would really appreciate going back to the old behavior, where only two
> keys needed to be held down at any time.
>

Looks like the current keyboard code lets you press Alt-SysRq,
Alt-<letter> without keeping the SysRq key held down, as long as you
don't release the Alt key.

That seems a lot more user-friendly to me.

-hpa