slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

daneel971 · 2010-06-27 16:20:13

Recently I noticed that in a tty the keyboard behaves strangely: up and down arrows aren't working, so I cannot browse the history, right and left don't move the cursor, and the keys are "slow" - sometimes I need to hit them twice to type a char or to wait between two "hit" (not for ages, but it is noticeable). The login is difficult because the password is not echoed to the screen and - with the keyboard in this condition - it's easy to mistype it.
The arrows don't work, for instance, in htop too.

It appears that the above happens on pcs with an nVidia card (two of them). The other one I have, with an ATI, works fine.
The installation is, on all three pcs, up to date, so: kernel 2.6.34, xorg-server 1.8, nvidia 256.35 - but I osserved the issue even with the previous versions of these packages.

I'd like to know if someone else has the same problem (and maybe a solution )

daneel971 · 2010-06-28 17:27:22

I did some tests...
It seems that the ttys work as described above only when I'm logged in in X (openbox session: I have to try if using a different session changes anything...). If I log into a tty before logging in X (via slim) all is good. Once I'm in openbox and try to log on a virtual console, all is... slow.
Strange. Does anyone have a clue?

ngoonee · 2010-06-28 22:54:39

I've had it sporadically before, doesn't happen TOO often so I'm not bothered. Just use the Magic Sysrq keys to kill your X session if needed.

tsagas · 2010-11-11 22:59:04

I have the exact same problem... I have a nvidia card, I use the nouveau driver with KMS and use Openbox for my X session. When I'm in openbox the keyboard works fine, but when I switch to a tty the keyboard acts like described above. Does anyone have any ideas what could be causing that?

manmachine · 2010-11-12 02:15:16

This is quite old, but did anyone found a solution for this?
Happens occasionally with xorg-server 1.9.2, nvidia 260.19.12 as well.

All that i've noticed is that when switching to the tty with ctrl+alt+f1 the nvidia driver tries to connect to the ACPI socket and will complain if acpid is not running. But this may well be unrelated and normal at resolution change?

Last edited by manmachine (2010-11-12 02:18:38)

tsagas · 2010-11-15 13:32:28

I noticed that this only happens when I use console-kit. When I use a display manager (who supports power management, automounting etc.) the ttys run smoothly. But if I disable the DM and use my xinitrc with something like "exec ck-launch-session...." then the whole keyboard weird behaviour reappears...

utsuwa · 2010-11-17 01:48:30

Same thing with ATI card. However, interestingly only tty1 is affected. tty2 is working fine. As a head-in-the-sand approach I just commented tty1 in rc.conf and use tty2 and tty3.

manmachine · 2010-11-17 04:22:38

utsuwa,
You are right only tty1 is affected. This tipped me off as well and i remembered that this is in fact an old Slim bug:
http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=475249
Are you all using slim like me and the original poster?

The strange thing is that I then checked the arch PKGBUILD and the patch discussed in the link above is in fact included (called: "slim-tty-slowness.patch").
So i didn't rebuild it, i simply uncommented the following line in slim.conf:

/etc/slim.conf:

daemon  yes

And this also fixed tty1 for me!

utsuwa · 2010-11-17 06:40:29

manmachine,

Indeed I use SliM . It is a great login manager. Sleek too. I will try what you have suggested. Surprisingly, before it used to work, but not in my rencent Arch installation. Maybe something got changed in the default settings.

utsuwa · 2010-11-17 07:37:10

Can you show me your inittab? How slim is specified there?

manmachine · 2010-11-17 12:06:58

Sure, in my innitab i have:

x:5:respawn:/usr/bin/slim >& /dev/null

utsuwa · 2010-11-17 23:53:34

That's same as in mine. I tried your solution yesterday, however now tty1 gives me INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled 5 minutes. And I cannot login as root. Basically I have to wait to login in tty1. SLiM login is fine. However when I try to switch back from tty1 to GUI (ctrl+alt+f7) it shows black screen. So, I am back to just commenting out tty1 in inittab

Last edited by utsuwa (2010-11-17 23:54:06)

manmachine · 2010-11-18 01:26:53

Hmmm the respawning should be fixed if slim is added to the daemons array in rc.conf as described in the wiki:
(and commented out in innitab)
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Di … ay_manager

I just rebooted to make sure and right now all my ttys are working properly, slim works, and i see no other errors but i'll keep watching this.

My wild guess was that the patch mentioned fixes slim and this issue if it's run as a daemon.
One option i saw was the daemon variable in slim.conf, the other is the -d flag. If slim is added to the daemons array btw it will be started by the /etc/rc.d/slim script which uses the -d flag.

Well it works for me..so far.
If you're having such problems though with black screens and you can't login when slim is running as a daemon (which looks like a separate issue), then maybe it's best to stick to your workaround.

Cheers

Last edited by manmachine (2010-11-18 01:33:42)

utsuwa · 2010-11-18 01:45:58

I see. I will try the rc.conf method and comment x out in inittab and disk and execution monitor in slim.conf. I will post the result within an hour.

utsuwa · 2010-11-18 05:14:30

You were right if you comment it out in inittab and put it into rc.conf, then there are no problems with tty1

Howitzer · 2010-12-06 20:14:40

I'm having the same issue, but don't use SLiM.

I only have the following line in /etc/inittab

x:5:once:/bin/su howitzer -l -c '/usr/bin/startx >/dev/null 2>&1'

(on boot, start X as user howitzer)

As previously said, the problem can be circumvented by using TTY2-6,
but I'd like to know what causes this behavior.

pirateofms · 2010-12-09 20:19:18

Changing the line in my inittab to:

 x:5:once:/usr/bin/slim -d

fixed it for me.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-06-27 16:20:13

slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#2 2010-06-28 17:27:22

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#3 2010-06-28 22:54:39

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#4 2010-11-11 22:59:04

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#5 2010-11-12 02:15:16

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#6 2010-11-15 13:32:28

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#7 2010-11-17 01:48:30

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#8 2010-11-17 04:22:38

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#9 2010-11-17 06:40:29

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#10 2010-11-17 07:37:10

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#11 2010-11-17 12:06:58

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#12 2010-11-17 23:53:34

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#13 2010-11-18 01:26:53

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#14 2010-11-18 01:45:58

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#15 2010-11-18 05:14:30

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#16 2010-12-06 20:14:40

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

#17 2010-12-09 20:19:18

Re: slow/unresponsive keyboard in tty (with nVidia)

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