The following CVS commit on Feb 10th, of CHANGELOG entry 864 has broken VTswitching between VTs while switched away from the X server: 865. Add private keysyms for the new XKB actions (XFree86 special keys), and move those actions to an XKB compatibility map. This fixes side-effects (loss of auto-repeat and mousekeys functionality) of the way this was implemented previously (#5610, Ivan Pascal). To reproduce: 1) Install XFree86 release from Feb 10th or later that has #865 2) startx 3) Switch away to any other VC with CTRL-ALT-Fn 4) Try to switch to another VC now other than the one the X server is running on. Results: The console switches only for a very short flash to the requested console, then switches back. You are effectively stuck on the tty you've switched to, and can only switch back to the X server itself. Other info: While switched away from the X server, if you kill the server, then VT switching works again. I have backed out the changes from that one commit, and the problem is gone in build 20030212.0.
Oops, I mean it was reverted with XFree86-4.2.99.901-revert-xkb-patch-865.patch in 20030211.3 and later. The latest CVS snapshot applies a correct fix for this problem, so I have removed the above patch, and this problem should be fixed in build: XFree86-4.2.99.901-20030213.0 Setting bug to MODIFIED pending testing.
Confirmed. Ivan's fix works.