Arch Linux

burebista

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2015-11-12

Posts: 30

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

Just a small update. Stupid thing, but I wanted to try it nevertheless: I switched temporarily to a plain very simple Logitech WIRED mouse and of course the problems still happen. Other than that I am still waiting for pcspecialist.co.uk/Clevo to publish a bios update for my laptop model in order to see if it will fix these problems...

burebista

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2015-11-12

Posts: 30

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

An update:

Pcspecialist released today a new BIOS version. That updated the version of the BIOS itself, but not the version of the KBC/EC Firmware past what it came from factory. when I bought the laptop. I will let you if this new BIOS fixed anything.

HOWEVER, I have a few other interesting observations relevant to my keyboard problems:

Until very few weeks ago I did not bother to configure the touchpad in Arch. That means I did not installed xf86-input-synaptics (as described in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/To … Synaptics), nor xf86-input-libinput (as described in https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Libinput). However libinput itself was installed by some qt package (I think it was qt5-base). So the touchpad was completely dead and I always used an USB wireless mouse.

Then I installed xf86-input-libinput and the touchpad started working. It worked for very few days until some updates (I do not which to which packages) broke it, meaning that it was either not working at all or EACH TIME WHEN I TOUCHED IT, IT CAUSED THE KEYBOARD TO BECOME DEAD, so I had each time to reload the atkbd in order to make the keyboard work again. Then In uninstalled xf86-input-libinput and installed instead xf86-input-synaptics. That worked again for very few days until some updates broke that one also, so it started also killing the keyboard each time I was touching the touchpad. Then again very few  days after that (after some more updates) xf86-input-synaptics started working normally, that is without killing the keyboard, but if I unistalled it and installed instead xf86-input-synaptics, that would kill the keyboard with every touch of the touchpad. Now I am still using the xf86-input-synaptics and it does not kill the keyboard when touching the touchpad. MY CONCLUSION FROM ALL THIS EXPERIENCE WITH THE TOUCHPAD: depending on the version of various packages installed (I do full a system update every day), the touch pad killed or not the keyboard - THIS SUGGESTS TO ME THAT THE PROBLEMS WITH THE KEYBOARD (AND PERHAPS ALSO WHEN THE KEYBOARD DIES WITHOUT TOUCHING THE TOUCHPAD) ARE NOT NECESSARILY A BIOS/EC PROBLEM, BUT A LINUX PROBLEM. OTHERWISE I WOULD NOT HAVE HAD THIS INCONSISTENCY DEPENDING ON THE VERSIONS OF PACKAGES PUSHED BY UPDATES. Whether the BIOS/EC has a problem or not I do not know, but Linux (or at least Arch Linux) certainly seems to have.

Thank you.

Last edited by burebista (2016-03-18 20:46:12)

burebista

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2015-11-12

Posts: 30

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

Hello,

Another update:

A week ago I installed a new bios version that seemed to have improved slightly the keyboard problems but did not removed them. I did not get anymore the keyboard repetitions problem in last few weeks actually, but I still get the keyboard dying problem.

However, I think more and more that this is A LINUX PROBLEM and not a BIOS problem:
Over the past many weeks the frequency of the keyboard problems varied depending on the updates to various linux packages. Even more, within this last week (with the new BIOS), the first few days the touchpad did not kill my keyboard anymore when touching it, but now it does it again! As I said I update my system fully each day. I am beginning to think that I perhaps should switch to Ubuntu to see if it is more stable, even if it does not have the rolling release style which Arch has and which I like very much.

Eliminating the BIOS and the embedded controller from the list of suspects, could these linux problems have to do with the Skylake processor that my laptop has, meaning perhaps that it is not (yet) supported properly in Linux?

mich41

Member

Registered: 2012-06-22

Posts: 796

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

Do you have a log from one particular update which changed something? See /var/log/pacman.log.

burebista

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2015-11-12

Posts: 30

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

Not at the moment. I will look more attentive in future when I do an upgrade to see how it affects the touchpad, and when I see a change in the behavior of the touchpad, I post here the behavioral change and what packages were upgraded.

Currently the touchpad does not work with any of the 2 approaches (xf86-input-synaptics or xf86-input-libinput). With any of them it is completely dead excepting for the fact that when I touch it, it kills my keyboard. Any combinations that I do in the touchpad settings of cinnamon (like enable/disable the touchpad, as well as disable or not disable the touchpad while typing) have no effect whatsoever.

prash

Member

Registered: 2011-08-18

Posts: 57

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

Weird problems such as the one you have are sometimes solved by using a different kernel version. One one of my laptops, I used an LTS kernel for a long time, because linux-<3.18--4.4> would misbehave on that system. On another laptop, I took the latest kernel from [testing] to fix my problem. I recommend you try these too.

burebista

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2015-11-12

Posts: 30

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

So,

Yesterday I updated the system through yaourt-gui and here is what it updated:

[2016-04-02 08:33] [PACMAN] starting full system upgrade
[2016-04-02 08:33] [ALPM] transaction started
[2016-04-02 08:33] [ALPM] upgraded libnm-glib (1.0.10-2 -> 1.0.12-1)
[2016-04-02 08:33] [ALPM] upgraded networkmanager (1.0.10-2 -> 1.0.12-1)
[2016-04-02 08:33] [ALPM] warning: /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist installed as /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.pacnew
[2016-04-02 08:33] [ALPM] upgraded pacman-mirrorlist (20160320-1 -> 20160401-1)
[2016-04-02 08:33] [ALPM] transaction completed

Before and after the update the touchpad was behaving the same as before: not working, but killing the keyboard when touched.

Then yesterday later I re-installed xf86-input-synaptics. That did not change anything. Rebooted. Still no change in touchpad behavior.
Then I uninstalled it and installed again xf86-input-libinput. Again nothing changed. Rebooted. Still no change in behavior.

And today I started the laptop and the touchpad works and not killing the keyboard! Very puzzling, as I did not install or update anything since the switching between xf86-input-synaptics->xf86-input-libinput->xf86-input-synaptics that I did yesterday.
Then I restarted the system again to see if it will still work and it still worked. I did another system update that updated wine and some obscure libs and the touchpad still works.

So why did the touchpad start working today? No idea. Let's see how long it lasts...

burebista

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2015-11-12

Posts: 30

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

So, here is the latest update that broke my touchpad again: meaning that before the update it was working and after the update it went back to not working but killing the keyboard when I touch it:

[2016-04-04 18:39] [PACMAN] starting full system upgrade
[2016-04-04 18:39] [ALPM] transaction started
[2016-04-04 18:39] [ALPM] upgraded gdk-pixbuf2 (2.32.3-1 -> 2.34.0-1)
[2016-04-04 18:39] [ALPM] warning: /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist installed as /etc/pacman.d/mirrorlist.pacnew
[2016-04-04 18:39] [ALPM] upgraded pacman-mirrorlist (20160401-1 -> 20160404-1)
[2016-04-04 18:39] [ALPM] upgraded python-pillow (3.1.1-1 -> 3.2.0-1)
[2016-04-04 18:39] [ALPM] upgraded python2-pillow (3.1.1-1 -> 3.2.0-1)
[2016-04-04 18:39] [ALPM] upgraded vim-runtime (7.4.1639-1 -> 7.4.1689-1)
[2016-04-04 18:39] [ALPM] upgraded vim (7.4.1639-1 -> 7.4.1689-1)
[2016-04-04 18:39] [ALPM] transaction completed
[2016-04-04 18:40] [PACMAN] Running 'pacman --color auto -U /tmp/yaourt-tmp-vali/PKGDEST.ATX/android-platform-23_r03-1-any.pkg.tar.xz'
[2016-04-04 18:40] [ALPM] transaction started
[2016-04-04 18:40] [ALPM] warning: directory permissions differ on /opt/android-sdk/
filesystem: 775  package: 755

... lots of other similar permissions warnings about other files android-platform here...

[2016-04-04 18:40] [ALPM] warning: directory permissions differ on /opt/android-sdk/platforms/android-23/skins/WQVGA432/
filesystem: 775  package: 755
[2016-04-04 18:40] [ALPM] upgraded android-platform (23_r02-1 -> 23_r03-1)
[2016-04-04 18:40] [ALPM] transaction completed

And the breaking is consistent: I restarted twice the laptop and after each restart it is broken as explained at the beginning of this comment.

Any thoughts?

mich41

Member

Registered: 2012-06-22

Posts: 796

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

That's weird, those packages shouldn't be able to cause it. Can you downgrade them (from /var/cache/pacman/pkg) and see what happens? Maybe it's only one of them, maybe it's none of them and just random change...

burebista

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2015-11-12

Posts: 30

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

OK, it is random:
The touchpad not working or working right from starting the system (and each time when not working having the second effect of killing the keyboard when touched) is random. I booted the computer many times without software update in between and it randomly works or not.

So some sort of initialization succeeds or fails randomly when the system starts. What do you think guys, is that random failure part of Linux or EC/BIOS?

Also, is there a kernel module to reload for touchpad (like atkbd for keyboard) in order to see if I can get it working after a system start when it fails to initialize correctly?

Thank you.

Ropid

Member

Registered: 2015-03-09

Posts: 1,069

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

This here should print a somewhat pretty list with kernel module names and their descriptions:

lsmod | perl -nE 'BEGIN{ <> }; ($m) = /(\S+)/; printf "%-20s: %s\n", $m, qx/modinfo $m/ =~ /description:\s*(.*)/'

Perhaps this helps with finding what's dealing with the touchpad.

Last edited by Ropid (2016-04-23 04:28:03)

burebista

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2015-11-12

Posts: 30

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

Hi,

I installed Ubuntu 16.04 LTS in parallel to Arch 1 day after it was released.
Since then I kept booting in both of the operating systems alternatively. And guess what: while on Arch I keep getting randomly the touchpad problem (touchpad not working but killing the keyboard when I touch it), IT NEVER HAPPENED IN UBUNTU YET! In fact, I did not get any problems whatsoever with the keyboard or touchpad in Ubuntu yet.

Last edited by burebista (2016-05-21 06:05:32)

burebista

Member

From: Scotland

Registered: 2015-11-12

Posts: 30

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

Still the same problems and STILL THEY NEVER HAPPENED IN UBUNTU 16.04 - so it is crystal clear that these are Linux Arch problems.

For anybody interested, for manually fixing the touchpad when the before listed problem happen, I need tor reload the i8042 module, on which depends libps2, on which depends atkbd, so:

rmmod atkbd; rmmod libps2; rmmod i8042; modprobe libps2; modprobe atkbd; modprobe i8042

gnumdk

Member

Registered: 2009-10-15

Posts: 175

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

Can confirm issue here on archlinux and XPS 13

gnumdk

Member

Registered: 2009-10-15

Posts: 175

Re: Random keyboard keys repeating indefinitely / keyboard dies completely

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … mments/173