M-f, M-b bindings not working on Mac X11 (through NX)

Question

Business as usual: I've logged into my Linux machine from my MacBook Pro using NX, opened a terminal, and ... key bindings with M- (Meta-) do not work. (Talking about bash, of course.) Wait for it. I'm using a PC keyboard hooked up to my Mac (I cannot work on a cramped laptop keyboard). So I decided to investigate: used xev to capture events. When I press left 'Alt' on the PC keyboard, 'xev' reports that 'Meta_L' got depressed. Problem is, it seems that it gets ignored for some reason (no idea why).

It is really annoying, because the same is true for Eclipse. Practically all key bindings with Alt- in them are gone.

My hunch would be to use xmodmap to force the left Alt key to actually emit 'Alt_L', but I wanted to hear a second opinion.

Answer 1

It turns out, the problem was that, according to 'xmodmap -pm', Meta_L and Meta_R were not in Mod1 special modifier category. When I moved them there, everything started to work. (Turns out, some programs assume, incorrectly, that 'Mod1' is Meta/Alt, and ignore keysyms like Meta_L.)