topic Re: Strange Keyboard behavior with Fedora Core 5 in Operating System - Linux

Strange Keyboard behavior with Fedora Core 5

John Collier — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 14:54:16 GMT

I have tried posting this on the GNOME support forums and one of the other predominately Fedora focused forums, but got nowhere fast, so I thought I would come here. After all, I have witnessed some pretty impressive insight here that I have yet to see equaled anywhere else. I'm hoping you won't let me down this time either.

OK, I have no idea how to search for this one through Google or any other search function for that matter. I have never seen or even heard of anything like it, so I thought I would bring it here and see if anybody here has any clues and possible solutions.

I currently have a Presario 2100 Laptop on which I have loaded Fedora Core 5. I also have both GNOME and KDE installed on the box (KDE for the Mrs.) All updates have been applied through YUM as recently as last night.

The issue is simply this:

On this laptop, I have found that the letter “P” on the keyboard is completely dead in the GNOME environment, but works as expected in the KDE environment. It took me a long time to realize that the keyboard was not broken since I use nothing but GNOME by choice and the Mrs. almost never uses the laptop!

Now, just to put this in perspective I want to make it clear that everything was working beautifully for quite some time. I do not have an exact time frame for the beginning of the issue. Honestly, the letter “p” is not one that I use all that often in my daily computer life, so it most likely went unnoticed for quite some time.

So, anybody have any clues on this and how I can get it resolved? I can use KDE and move on, but I really don't want to do this. Honestly, KDE reminds me way too much of the M$ desktop and pretty much makes my stomach roll.

Please help me get my GNOME working correctly again...

Re: Strange Keyboard behavior with Fedora Core 5

Ivan Ferreira — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 15:07:38 GMT

This is a very extrange case.

Ensure that your P key is not configured for a keyboard shortcut. Check your "personal settings".

In the keyboard preferences, you have a box to test your configuration. Can you write the p letter in that box? Also disable keyboard accesibility.

If you start gnome using "startx" and then you press the p key, if you go back to the virtual console where you started X, can you see some debug info?

Re: Strange Keyboard behavior with Fedora Core 5

Steven E. Protter — Thu, 24 Aug 2006 16:54:37 GMT

Shalom,

Quite strange indeed.

I'd see about reinstalling the system completely.

Or you may want to change the keyboard settings in xorg.conf and see if something else works.

Lastly, I'd see if you can pull the .gconfd contents from a working system and see if that helps.

Lastly I'd see about figuring out where the termcap files are and replace those.

A reinstall seems much easier.

I agree the issue is probably not physical, but please connect a USB keyboard to the system and see what happens.

SEP

Re: Strange Keyboard behavior with Fedora Core 5

Huc_1 — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 07:25:52 GMT

It is probably a user setup problem.. well that is lets pretend it is , the if you create a new user and start gnome from this user then this problem should not be there anymore ?

is it gone ?

if it is compare with your own set up, and keep us informed.

Also before mv or and/or copy files to your gnome env do a backup of your user env "/home"

hope this proofs usefull.

Jean-Pierre Huc

Re: Strange Keyboard behavior with Fedora Core 5

John Collier — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 11:14:29 GMT

This is why I always keep this forum in the back of my mind for the "closet cases" issues I seem to come up with sometimes. It seems there is NEVER a lack of good people that are willing to jump in and offer some kind of input.

I had a little bit of time last night after I get my daughter to her Taekwondo class to do a couple of experiments. You know, things I should have thought of before, but just didn't...

One of these was to create a new user and see what happened with that logon. Guess what.... It worked just fine in both GNOME and KDE.

Then I decided that I would actually log into the book as 'root' for the first time in months just to experiment a bit. No need to since the keyboard worked just fine there as well.

While I had no more time to dig much deaper, it does confort me to confirm that it is not an Xorg config isuse that requires me to change keyboards. The one I have is apparently in prefectly good working order. Of course, this also raises several questions.

Besides seeing if my 'P' key is mapped to some strange event that is not happening each time I press it, where would I find issues that might contribute to a single user loosing a key while all others continue to work? I know it has to be a config issue somewhere, but I have to admit to knowing very little details on the FC5 / GNOME location fo the proper config files.

Also, what would I be looking for in the files if I am fortunate enough to find. them?

Re: Strange Keyboard behavior with Fedora Core 5

Huc_1 — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 11:28:23 GMT

I guess the guilty entry would be somewhere in
the user env.

ls -la .gnom*

Jean-Pierre Huc

Re: Strange Keyboard behavior with Fedora Core 5

John Collier — Sat, 02 Sep 2006 11:42:37 GMT

Although it makes no sense to me, I have managed to correct the issue.

Perhaps it will be of service for someone else in the future for me to share what I found:

I created a test user and found the keyboard worked as expected for the new user. I then verified the keyboard worked correctly for the root account as well.

Double-checking, I found all the keyboard settings to be the same (105 key, generic) for each user. In looking at the available keyboards, I found that there was one listed specifically for this family of laptops. Figuring I had nothing to loose, I decided to try it for the messed up account. It worked!

I gained no new functions by doing this, I simply have all my keys working again for the affected user.

The reason it worked is still a bit of a mystery, but the bottom line is that it is working.

At one time I would have tried to dig deeper and find the root cause of all of this, but I have moved beyond that these days. I am simply glad it is working!

Thanks to you all for the thoughts and suggestions. Points have been assigned as accurately as possible for this.