23/6/2008
When you are running X windows apps in gdb and they grab the mouse and then crash or hit a breakpoint your console is locked out, you can't do anything except quit the app from a text terminal (i.e. Ctrl+Alt+F1).

However there is a better way. Add these lines to your X11 config:

Section "ServerFlags"
    Option "AllowDeactivateGrabs" "true"
EndSection

And restart X, now you should be able to use Ctrl+Alt+NumPad / to "ungrab" the mouse at any point and debug the issue in gdb.

Nice.

But it begs the question, why is it not on by default?

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Comments:

lsoltero 24/06/2008 7:11am	Thank you! how did you discover this? this has been driving me nuts for years... Adding the text to my config file now as I type this... --luis
fret 24/06/2008 7:14am	I got lucky with Google I guess, took me 10 minutes to find... :D But yeah, I've been annoyed by it for years too. Maybe it's a recent feature added in the x.org version of the server.

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