Shutting down X with control+alt+backspace

[Luke Dean]

On Sun, 7 Jun 2009, Manolis Kiagias wrote:

> Manolis Kiagias wrote:
>> Luke Dean wrote:
>>
>>> This is an answer to a question I started to post, but then decided to
>>> research instead.  I know many readers of this list use the feature I'm
>>> describing.
>>>
>>> When Xorg was upgraded to version 7.4, the historic ability to shut
>>> down X
>>> with Control+Alt+Backspace became a non-default option.  The solution to
>>> re-enabling this behavior was to add
>>>     Option "DontZap" "off"
>>> to the ServerLayout or ServerFlags section of xorg.conf as documented in
>>> a note in the Handbook
>>> http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/x-config.html
>>>
>>> A few days ago, x11/xkeyboard-config was upgraded to 1.6 and the solution
>>> in the Handbook is no longer sufficient.
>>>
>>> The new solution that gets Control+Alt+Backspace working for me
>>> again is to add
>>>     Option  "XKbOptions" "terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp"
>>> to the "InputDevice" section of xorg.conf.
>>>
>>>
>>
>> Thanks for mentioning this. I have not yet upgraded to the new version
>> of xkeyboard-config, but will try this and update the Handbook accordingly.
>>
>>
>
> This gets even more complicated - the setting in xorg.conf will only be
> effective when "AutoAddDevices" is false (or "AllowEmptyInput" is
> false).  On systems that totally rely on HAL for device detection, the
> setting has to be moved to an XML file like this:
>
> <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
> <deviceinfo version="0.2">
>   <device>
>     <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keyboard">
>       <merge key="input.x11_driver"  type="string">kbd</merge>
>       <merge key="input.xkb.Model"   type="string">pc105</merge>
>       <merge key="input.xkb.Layout"  type="string">us</merge>
>       <merge key="input.xkb.Rules"   type="string">xorg</merge>
>       <merge key="input.xkb.Options"
> type="string">terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp</merge>
>     </match>
>   </device>
> </deviceinfo>
>
> which should be named i.e. keyboard.fdi and placed in
> /usr/local/etc/hal/fdi/policy
>
> In light of the above, I feel we probably need to add a section on
> "Configuring Additional Options Using HAL" to the Handbook.

Oh, okay.  I'm not running HAL and I do have "AllowEmptyInput" and
"AutoAddDevices" off, so just modifying the xorg.conf was enough
for me.
So far I've avoided HAL because it seems complicated and scary,
and I don't know what the benefits of using it would be aside
from some automounting tricks that I can live without.  It does seem
to be the wave of the future however, so any documentation that might
help ease me into that transition would be appreciated.