[virt-tools-list] [PATCH 1/2] Add ability to send Secure attention sequence via keyboard

[Jonathon Jongsma]

----- Original Message -----
> From: "Martin Kletzander" <mkletzan at redhat.com>
> To: "Hans de Goede" <hdegoede at redhat.com>
> Cc: "Jonathon Jongsma" <jjongsma at redhat.com>, virt-tools-list at redhat.com
> Sent: Monday, September 2, 2013 3:51:54 AM
> Subject: Re: [virt-tools-list] [PATCH 1/2] Add ability to send Secure attention sequence via keyboard
> 
> On 08/31/2013 10:48 AM, Hans de Goede wrote:
> > Looks good, ack series.
> > 
> > On 08/30/2013 11:21 PM, Jonathon Jongsma wrote:
> >> On Windows, the OS doesn't allow applications to handle Ctrl+Alt+Del,
> >> because
> >> it's handled by the OS at a much lower level. Although we have a menu
> >> item to
> >> send this sequence to the guest, it's not possible to send via the
> >> keyboard (in
> >> the windows client). So add an alternative key sequence (defaulting to
> >> Ctrl+Alt+End) to send this sequence to the guest.
> 
> From virt-viewer POV, I'm mostly just a user and I haven't gone throught
> the patch, but does this make it configurable?  The reason I'm asking is
> because I can use Ctrl-Alt-Del normally and it is properly sent to the
> guest.  Even though this is very rare case, I guess, and C-M-<End> is
> not used anywhere, it would mean I'd be unable to send it to he guest
> properly.
> 
> Martin
> 


Hi Martin,

Short answer: yes, it's configurable, and by default it won't prevent you from sending this ctrl+alt+end sequence to the guest.

Longer answer: the documentation for how these 'hotkeys' work is not explained very well at the moment.  I need to patch the documentation to explain things a bit more fully.  But here's a quick overview as far as I understand it (those with more experience here may feel free to correct any misunderstandings I have).  If you start virt-viewer normally, these hotkeys are just normal menu accel keys.  When the guest display widget is focused, this widget grabs the keyboard input, so the menu accels get sent to the guest rather than affecting the client.  For instance, notice how the 'View > Full screen' accel is 'F11', but when the guest display widget is focused, pressing F11 doesn't actually make the client go fullscreen.  

These keyboard shortcuts only become 'global' hotkeys when they're configured as such on the commandline.  For example, if you use the following incantation

    remote-viewer --hotkeys toggle-fullscreen=F11

then suddenly the F11 key will cause the client to become fullscreen regardless of whether the guest display widget is focused or not.  When these hotkeys become 'global',a menu item also gets added to the 'Send key' menu which enables you to send this key combination to the guest via the GUI (since you can no longer send it via the keyboard). The 'Ctrl+Alt+End' combination added in this patch works in exactly the way described above.

Hope that helps,

Jonathon