Modify Ctrl-Alt-Del Keyboard Shortcut in Ubuntu

written on Thursday, February 21, 2008

The Ubuntu desktop has a simple GUI to modify keyboard shortcuts, but I noticed that any changes to the Ctrl-Alt-Del key combination would not work. The problem was that no matter where I assigned the Ctrl-Alt-Del shortcut, it would always open the "Logout" menu. The workaround for this bug is typed out in this post.

1. Make sure to disable the "Log out" action from the Keyboard Shortcuts editor (System » Preferences » Keyboard Shortcuts), by highlighting the line and pressing the "Backspace" key.

2. Open the Configuration Editor (System Tools » Configuration Editor), and disable the metacity Ctrl-Alt-Del binding under /apps/metacity/global_keybindings. Do this by right-clicking the key with the Ctrl-Alt-Del binding (i.e "run_command_1") and selecting "Unset Key"

3. In the same window, go to the next folder /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands. Select the matching command from the previous step (i.e. "command_1") and unset the key in the same manor as step 2. Close the Configuration Editor.

4. Finally, go back to the Keyboard Shortcuts app, and now select the new action for Ctrl-Alt-Del. Everything should work as expected now.

This entry was tagged keyboard shortcuts, metacity and ubuntu