a really odd thing has just happened in that suddenly my keyboard is only partially functional. auto key repeat is broken and i am unable to use the shift key, num lock or caps lock. hence this whole message is in lower case.
i am running ubuntu 5.04, my keyboard is a coolermaster aluminium one but essentially is a standard usb keyboard.
need to reboot in a while to write a legible letter. i would like to test it in a console but of course i can't use crtl,alt fkey either.
before i reboot can anyone think of any diagnostic steps i can take, for example is there something that will return the key presses from the keyboard.
the only thing i can think may have caused it is perhaps vmware. that said i haven't run it for a day or so and the fault has only just appeared. the only reason i think it might be vmware is that it takes control of the capslock and numlock status as you mouseover the virtual machine window.
any ideas....it's a bit odd to say the least
wayne
On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 10:35:41PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
before i reboot can anyone think of any diagnostic steps i can take, for example is there something that will return the key presses from the keyboard.
Sounds like a broken keyboard to me, but you can run the program "xev" to return all the x events to see what is going on. Oh, and check the output of dmesg to see for any error messages there or do an /etc/init.d/gdm stop or try the command "chvt 1" to get to a console (probably, not tested) to get to a text console....
Adam
On Tue, 2005-06-21 at 22:56 +0100, Adam Bower wrote:
Sounds like a broken keyboard to me, but you can run the program "xev" to return all the x events to see what is going on. Oh, and check the output of dmesg to see for any error messages there or do an /etc/init.d/gdm stop or try the command "chvt 1" to get to a console (probably, not tested) to get to a text console....
Adam
ahhh cheers for that, the reason i suspect that it isn't the keyboard is the autorepeat thing not working, isn't that software driven. i sort of remembered something like xev. anyway keyboard seems fine as for example i can press capslock when running xev and get....
KeyPress event, serial 26, synthetic NO, window 0x3800001, root 0x8e, subw 0x0, time 284817290, (295,466), root:(305,538), state 0x0, keycode 66 (keysym 0xffe5, Caps_Lock), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: XFilterEvent returns: False
KeyRelease event, serial 29, synthetic NO, window 0x3800001, root 0x8e, subw 0x0, time 284817386, (295,466), root:(305,538), state 0x0, keycode 66 (keysym 0xffe5, Caps_Lock), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
and so on....
same with the other non functioning keys. so i can only think that it's some weird problem with x. i'll give x a kick in a moment and see what happens.
cheers
wayne
Ok that was odd
first I tried to chvt 1 which gave me an error message- "Couldnt get a file descriptor referring to the console"
Not realising that needed to be run as root (hey it's late) I followed on with a sudo init 3, this caused a brief flurry of disk activity but not much else. I chose to do init 3 because (at least on my old SuSE installation) this should have dumped me on one of the tty's.
Then I tried sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop which did exactly what it said on the tin and left me sitting at a black screen (I still had video sync) but with the keys still not functioning (therefore I was unable to get to a tty to recover) numlock was still stuck on and caps lock didn't change the caps lock LED.
So then I booted up my laptop and via ssh did a /etc/init.d/gdm start. As I did this I noticed the numlock light flicker and low and behold I was back at the gdm login screen with a fully functional keyboard.
I saw the Nvidia splash screen as I restarted gdm so does that mean that stopping and starting gdm restarts the X server complete ? I am thinking that if xev could report the status of the non functioning keys then it was more likely to be something to do with gnome, but I didn't think the keyboard events were dealt with at that level.
I think I'll put it down to one of those things to not worry about unless it is repeatable.....cheers for the pointers Adam.
On Tue, Jun 21, 2005 at 10:35:41PM +0100, Wayne Stallwood wrote:
Oh, I should have also said that I once had a similar problem with a usb keyboard a few years back. (it was a different problem to what you had, but I recall that it was equally weird) In the end I took the keyboard to work where I had the exact same keyboard on my desk and swapped it where it worked fine with my work machine. I then took the keyboard from my desk home and it worked fine with my home desktop for about 12 months when all of a sudden it developed a weird problem and then died on the reboot.
Adam
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Adam Bower -
Wayne Stallwood