I Cannot Type the Key 'd' (lowercase) in VNC Viewer Connected to a vncserver of Ubuntu 10.10

Question

I set a vncserver in my Ubuntu 10.10 Server, and started the service by vncserver :1, and I could also connect it from my Ultra VNC viewer on my WinXP.

Everything works fine, but I just cannot type the Key d.

Say if I am in a terminal, and I type d, the terminal window will be minimized, and if I type d again, it comes back.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

Solution 1

I just got the solution by myself.

1. Go to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts;
2. Select the row Hide all normal windows and set focus to the desktop;
3. Press Alt+D or any other combination;
4. Kill your current vncserver connection by vncserver -kill :1;
5. Restart it by vncserver :1;
6. Re-connect it from your VNC client.

Problem solved.

Peter

Solution 2

Also you can use openbox as window manager instead of metacity for VNC sessions. Metacity shortcuts will not work, and Mod4+D does not break anything.

Solution 3

So I have seen the same question asked on 5 different stackexchange sites, and all the answers say to just remove the hotkey, which does work, but isn't the root of the problem (at least it wasn't for me). The real problem is that the windows super key is not mapped correctly, as is described here:

i3 ignores mod4 (windows key) when in VNC session

Basically just run these two commands

xmodmap -e "clear mod4"
xmodmap -e "add Mod4 = Super_L"

That should do it. Now the desktop should only be shown if you hold down the super (windows) key as well. The "d" key (and other keys with super shortcuts) should now work as expected.

You may need to replace Super_L with something else depending on your keyboard, check the link above for details.