Arch Linux

dam5h

Member

Registered: 2011-08-04

Posts: 21

[SOLVED]Very strange laptop behavior: keymap changing on fly

I have had arch up and running on my Lenovo T440s without issue for over 2 months now.  Today I ran into some very strange behavior.  After being on for about 45 minutes, with only a browser and thunderbird running, the keyboard started being selective in which keys woud work.  I could no longer mange the windows with my normal AwesomeWM key bindings.  The only thing I could do was restart by turning off and back on.  I checked journalctl and there had been a weird message around the time the error occured, something along the lines of "HKEY error 0x600, unknown thermal alarm or keyboard input".

Now I can barely login, ocassionally I can get my credentials input before the machine stops reading in certain letters.  When I use xterm rather than the usual urxvt the letters are all some different unicode symbols, it's like the keymap has been changed to something bizarre on the fly, right after loading up.  The time at which this issue arises is not predicatable, sometimes I can get further before it happens.  For example, sometimes I can't even enter my username and other times I get a few minutes, just enough to try to enable sshd so I can effectively troubleshoot remotely.  I was able to run an update and install lm_sensors remotely.  The cpu temps are right at or below 40 deg C.

Any ideas on how to debug this would be very appreciated.

Dave

Last edited by dam5h (2014-07-01 13:04:20)

dam5h

Member

Registered: 2011-08-04

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange laptop behavior: keymap changing on fly

This is happening again  I have doubts that it is the keymap, could be faulty RAM I suppose.  I was able to temporarily get normal operation back several times by going into suspend for a few seconds by closing the lid.  Although journalctl reported nothing around the time that it occured again.

Any ideas?  Thanks again

ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,675

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange laptop behavior: keymap changing on fly

I have doubts that it is the keymap, could be faulty RAM I suppose.  ...  Although journalctl reported nothing around the time that it occured again.

Any ideas?  Thanks again

I seriously doubt it is a memory problem.   Is this a PS/2 keyboard. or is it a USB keyboard?  If it is a USB keyboard, look for journal messages having to to do with USB disconnect and reconnect events.
If it is a  PS/2 keyboard, look for messages having to do with the LPC bus (Low pin Count).  This is the means that most modern machines implement things that lived on the ISA bus back in the 1980s. (Keyboards, mice, serial ports that mapped to IBM's COM1: through COM4:, etc...)

Last edited by ewaller (2014-06-25 03:11:29)

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dam5h

Member

Registered: 2011-08-04

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange laptop behavior: keymap changing on fly

Hello, thank you for the reply.

Actually this is a laptop so the keyboard is internal.  However I have input a usb keyboard from my desktop to try to isolate the issue when it occurs.  I get the same behavior out of my desktop usb keyboard.

I am seeing no messages in the journal when the event occurs (since that one mentioned above happened yesterday).  The problem has since arisen about 20 times and I am not getting any messages.  Perhaps there is a verbosity setting in the journalctl config, I haven't yet had time to look into that.

Two other oddities /clues are:
1. When I go into the BIOS, I cannot get consistent response from the keys.  At first the bios just beeps at me when I try to use the arrows of other keys, although usually eventually they start working.  At first I thought this may have to do with me pressing several keys to initiate the bios rapidly as the boot is so fast, but now I'm not sure that's it--based on the amount of time that the unresponsive beep alarm is occuring for (sometimes I stop waiting and restart).

2. When I get the bad behavior, I am able to put the machine to sleep (suspend) temporarily by closing the lid for 5 secs and reopening it.  After doing this I get normal keyboard behavior for another few minutes before it goes wonky again.

I need this machine for work in the evenings so any help troubleshooting would be very appreciated.  Will probably be calling lenovo soon, but given that I altered the OS from preinstalled windows they may not be very helpful.

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange laptop behavior: keymap changing on fly

Try adding this to the bootloader's cmdline, which can fix bad keyboard behaviour:

i8042.nomux=1

dam5h

Member

Registered: 2011-08-04

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange laptop behavior: keymap changing on fly

Thank you, I have just tried this.  So far so good.  Will report back how things go over the next few days.  Is there a way to monitor what issues this solves via journalctl?

brebs

Member

Registered: 2007-04-03

Posts: 3,742

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange laptop behavior: keymap changing on fly

Probably not. But keeping an eye on the logfile is a good idea anyway.

dam5h

Member

Registered: 2011-08-04

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange laptop behavior: keymap changing on fly

Well, unfortunately it happened again.  It's seeming more and more like its the computer itself and not only the keyboard.  The touchpad would not initiate a click on tapping all of a sudden.  Also I could not ping or ssh into the machine for some period of time.  Then all of a sudden it would return a ping and allow ssh.  I poked around remotely for about 5 minutes and then tried using the machine again and it had resolved itself--very odd.

I am going to look into some logging utilities to see if there is something that may help me figure this out, maybe some weird key combo is getting triggered and "held down" by some hardware fault. 

Also, I have installed memtest but need to get gummiboot configured to try that.

dam5h

Member

Registered: 2011-08-04

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange laptop behavior: keymap changing on fly

I think some of what I am experiencing could be teh keyboard, although the ping and ssh issues are very confusing.

I have installed logkey and I am seeing a lot of <AltGr> inputs even though I am not pushing down the right ctrl key.  At times, if I rest my palm too hard on the right side of laptop, hit the period button or some other key nearby, it is sending in the right ctl key.  If I slightly tough but not really depress the right ctl key it also triggers it.

I also saw a <E-8f> in there when running finger along the bottom border of keyboard surround under space bar, but I don;t know what that is mapped to.

So perhaps this is just a weird hardware thing, I will keep thread going until solved and appreciate any advice.

dam5h

Member

Registered: 2011-08-04

Posts: 21

Re: [SOLVED]Very strange laptop behavior: keymap changing on fly

I called Lenovo on Thursday afternoon and they had me a replacement keyboard the very next morning.  Swapped it out and it's been smooth sailing ever since.  The keylogger was the indicator that it was the keyboard.

Thanks for the replies.