Keyboard Shortcuts – why don't they work?

**Rebelli0us** · August 8th, 2008

System > Preferences > Keyboard Shortcuts

Opens a shortcut configuration applet. Under Desktop there is “Suspend”. I assigned Ctrl+Alt+End to “Suspend” the computer, but it doesn't work.

How do keyboard shortcuts work?

**silkstone** · August 8th, 2008

Do other keyboard shortcuts work?

If so, have you tried suspending by another method? It's possible that your machine doesn't want to suspend, rather than this being a problem with shortcuts.

**Rebelli0us** · August 8th, 2008

thank you. Yes other shortcuts work and machine suspends S3 just fine. I tried different keys, even rebooted, but no luck.

**silkstone** · August 8th, 2008

Mmmm... In that case I can't explain why that shortcut won't work, unless the instruction it generates is faulty. Have you tried another key combination?

Since other keyboard shortcuts do work, it's unlikely to be a general issue but perhaps specific to that instruction.

EDIT/ Sorry - you said you'd tried other key combinations - so I'm stumped.

**jamesrl** · August 25th, 2008

Came out with roundabout fix, by custom creating a keyboard shortcut to a command that uses dbus-send to suspend the computer: http://ubuntuforums.org/showpost.php...86&postcount=4

Basically you just, run gconf-editor, go to /apps/metacity/global_keybindings choose an unused run_command number (say run_command_9), set it to some custom value say <Control><Alt>End, then go to /apps/metacity/keybinding_commands/command_9/ and change the value to:

Code:

dbus-send --session --dest=org.freedesktop.PowerManagement --type=method_call /org/freedesktop/PowerManagement org.freedesktop.PowerManagement.Suspend

and it should work.

EDIT for 10.04: Elsewhere in the thread, the above version stopped working. However, from reddit I saw a post at commandlinefu.com with an updated command is:

Code:

dbus-send --system --print-reply --dest=org.freedesktop.UPower /org/freedesktop/UPower org.freedesktop.UPower.Suspend

I still would rather recommend just giving your normal user password sudoers privileges to execute /etc/acpi/sleep.sh or /usr/sbin/pm-suspend as that seems less likely to change on subsequent upgrades.

**Rebelli0us** · January 31st, 2009

Still not working, Keyboard Shortcuts is basic stuff! Any ideas?

**Rebelli0us** · August 5th, 2009

OK then, in new version Jaunty 9.04 my "Suspend" shortcut (Ctrl+Alt+End) finally does something, but it doesn't suspend, it just blanks the screen! Then, with the next key-press it un-blanks the screen.

Is anybody using keyboard shortcuts successfully?

**jamesrl** · March 18th, 2010

Finally upgraded to 9.10 (preparing to eventually upgrade to lucid) and the previous dbus command stopped working for me, and I couldn't find another dbus command to send.

So my current workaround involves granting me privileges to suspend via

Code:

sudo /etc/acpi/sleep.sh force

without using a password.
(Advice taken from here: http://www.gratisoft.us/sudo/man/sud...swd_and_passwd)

If you are user name "jamesrl" on computer "jamesrl_computer", you can give that user permission to initiate sleep by editing the /etc/sudoers (e.g., sudo nano /etc/sudoers ), and adding the following line at the end:

Code:

jamesrl jamesrl_computer = NOPASSWD: /etc/acpi/sleep.sh

If you don't know your computer's name, just go to a terminal and type 'hostname'.
Then go to System->Prefs->Shortcut Editor, and a custom shortcut with a command "sudo /etc/acpi/sleep.sh force", bind it to a key sequence (e.g., Ctrl-Alt-End for me) and you are done.