After upgrading my FreeBSD-based laptop to XOrg 7.2, I noticed that the virtual terminal capability (via Control-Alt-Fn) had stopped working. If X was not running, then the switching worked; when X was running, the keystrokes were just echoed in the xterm with focus.
I tracked this down to the following setting in xorg.conf:
XkbRules "xfree86"
By changing this to:
Option XkbRules "xorg"
the virtual terminals were now accessible when X was running. I guess I should have made this change a long time ago...
Also note that I have:
Option XkbLayout "gb"
If XkbLayout is set to "uk", virtual terminals also cannot be
invoked with X running.
