Xorg problem --- How do i reenable ' ctrl alt backspace ' in Xorg?

[DerickWales]

i need to legitimately use this because X crashes every so often, oftentimes at login.

i tried adding Options "DontZap" "false" to xorg.conf but i stall can't use ctrl alt backspace.

[reed9]

What distribution are you running?

DontZap has also been deprecated now.

Couple of options that might work.

Set this to run when you start your window manager/desktop environment.

setxkbmap -option terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp

Or create a HAL policy. (This will be deprecated soon, since HAL is going away. Ubuntu 10.04 has already ditched it.) Borrowed from the Arch Wiki:
Add the following to /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-keymap.fdi to enable this behavior. If that file does not exist, copy it from the template at /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-keymap.fdi:

# cp /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-keymap.fdi /etc/hal/fdi/policy/10-keymap.fdi

Check for a line resembling this:

<merge key="input.xkb.options" type="string">terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp</merge>

If the input.xkb.options line already exists, add terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp to the existing line:

<merge key="input.xkb.options" type="string">grp:alt_shift_toggle,terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp</merge>

Afterwards, Restart HAL and Xorg.

[uldics]

I had same problem a while ago. It turned out to be the Gnome keyboard indicators fault. Right click on it, Keyboard preferences, Layouts, Layout options, in the middle - Key sequence to kill the X server. Probably some other key combinations in that menu are preventing the ctrl or alt being understood the way it is necessary.