Comments on: Disable Ctrl+Alt+Backspace from Restarting X Windows on Linux

By: John

John — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:05:21 +0000

I try to disable it… but it doesn`t work, please help!!!

By: Brett Rasmussen

Brett Rasmussen — Thu, 03 Jul 2008 22:25:29 +0000

I don’t know how to remap, but you can simply ctrl+alt+f1 (or f2-f6) to go to a text-mode terminal, log in as root, and restart your display manager. If you’re using gnome, it’s “/etc/init.d/gdm restart”, and there’s kdm for KDE or xdm for others. Keep in mind that it will jump you to your newly started display manager’s login screen on the f7 virtual terminal, but you’ll still be logged in as root on f1 (and, though they probably wouldn’t guess it’s there, anybody could come and use a root shell on your box). So when you first see that login screen, hit ctrl+alt+f1 again, log out, then hit ctrl+alt+f7 to get back to X.

Thanks for the info, by the way. I use a kinesis keyboard, and backspace is at my left thumb. I hit it by accident all the time, and from time to time kill my whole X session inadvertently.

By: Anonymous Coward

Anonymous Coward — Tue, 10 Jun 2008 04:02:16 +0000

The the author realize that there is no such thing as “X-Windows?” It’s called “the X-Window System.” Windows is something from Redmond.

By: The Geek

The Geek — Sat, 31 May 2008 15:04:49 +0000

@Scott

Note that I recommended against using this… I like the key combination and end up needing to use it all the time. I’m not sure about re-mapping, that was going to be my next research…

This could be useful if you wanted to setup an internet kiosk, for example, and didn’t want anybody to be able to kill X.

By: Scott Wegner

Scott Wegner — Sat, 31 May 2008 13:14:18 +0000

Although the Ctrl+Alt+Backspace shortcut may be a slight annoyance for new Linux users, what alternative do you have when your X windows freezes? Is there some way to perhaps re-map this to another key combination? Disabling it completely will force users to hard-reboot when the GUI freezes, which is a much worse alternative.