I’m posting here, because i have no idea how to search for this.

When exploring GTK programming, I ran into a very specific problem:

I created an application that crashes when i open a GtkDropDown, so to debug the crash I ran my app inside GDB. When GDB notices an application crashing, it freezes it, so i can analyze the state in which it crashed. The GtkDropDown grabs the pointer, like rofi or i3lock grab the pointer to prevent the window manager from exercising any keyboard shortcuts. Problem is now, the application gets frozen while the pointer is grabbed, so I’m basically locked out of my window manager.

To close the application, I can just log into a TTY and kill the GDB process, but I would like to have a simpler solution, that possibly doesn’t kill the application.

Is there a way with Xorg to get out of such a situation without switching to the TTY? If not, why can a single user application completely prevent you from using anything in your graphical environment?

Because Xorg bad? Should I switch to Wayland?

Solution (thanks to @[email protected]):

  • switch to TTY and log in
  • export DISPLAY=':0'
  • setxkbmap -option grab:break_actions
  • xdotool key XF86Ungrab
  • @vector_zero
    2•1 year ago

    Ah, I’ve almost always used a single monitor setup, so my use case wasn’t weird enough to break X11. That said. Even Wayland is wonky on my multi monitor setup at work, though that’s probably more a GNOME thing than a Wayland thing.

    I do still think the approach they took with Wayland is a tad odd, in that everyone has to implement it themselves. But hey, if it works, it works.