Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 57612
Keyboard doesn't work in X's Failsafe mode
Last modified: 2007-04-18 12:38:45 EDT
From Bugzilla Helper: User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:0.9.4) Gecko/20011019 Netscape6/6.2 Description of problem: It seems that since installing 7.2, my X Windows failsafe mode no longer works correctly. The failsafe screen comes up with the single xterm, but the xterm never seems to get focus, so I cannot type anything in the xterm. Also, there are no menus available from the root window. The strange thing is that I can cut and paste from and to the xterm. It worked using 6.2, but has not worked since I installed (I didn't use the upgrade option) 7.2. Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. Select failsafe from kdm 2. Enter username and password 3. Click Go! Actual Results: X actually comes up and there is an xterm with no window management in the lower right corner of the screen, but the window never seems to get focus except through cut and paste. No menus appear by left or right clicking on the root window. Expected Results: Should be able to type commands in the xterm. Failsafe mode worked as expected on 6.2. Additional info: Nothing unusual appears in the logs. Let me know what kind of debugging to turn on, and I'll send the output to you.
That is correct behaviour. You're starting X up with no desktop environment, and no window managers. All of the things you are claiming thtat are missing are all features of either a window manager, or a desktop environment. If you want to have window management, and desktop management, then you must run a window manager, or KDE or GNOME, etc. The raw Xserver with an xterm running in it is not very useful.