You are not logged in.

#1 2018-12-31 12:10:58

tealeaf
Member
Registered: 2014-02-12
Posts: 6

Thinkpad X270: Hang / freeze in X when pressing function keys

I've been running this system for about two years using i3, and never had a problem.

After a recent systemwide update -- sometime in the last week or so -- pressing any of the function keys apart from F1/F2/F3 causes an odd hang/freeze in X. I noticed it particularly due to Shift+Insert (which is Shift+Fn+End on this system) hanging X.

The mouse will sometimes work for a while after the keypress, but will also sometimes disappear. I can always Ctrl+Alt+F<n> to get to the console and kill the relevant process. (`killall i3` doesn't manage to kill the process, but `killall -9 i3` will.)

I'm not getting any odd messages in dmesg, journalctl, or from the xsession itself. I use startx from the console to open X, not a login manager.

I've tried doing this whilst running `xev`. While X does sometimes hang entirely, I've also occasionally seen it still registering keystrokes in xev, but XLookupString gives a blank output after I've pressed the offending keystrokes. Pressing "Fn" on its own doesn't cause the hang.

I've tried downgrading the kernel to 4.19.11, alongside the associated tp_smapi and acpi_call modules in case it was related to that, but no luck. Without any apparent errors being logged, I'm really quite stuck here!

Offline

#2 2019-01-03 14:48:57

tealeaf
Member
Registered: 2014-02-12
Posts: 6

Re: Thinkpad X270: Hang / freeze in X when pressing function keys

As an update: I haven't solved this, but after coming home and plugging in my external keyboard the same behaviour seems to happen when I use some of its media keys.

I have a Vortex Pok3r. The insert button is mapped to Fn+semicolon, and that works fine. I just noticed, though, that when  I hit Fn+w, which is mapped to XF86AudioPlay, that it caused the same behaviour as the original post.

Still very confused, but now with some extra information. This isn't just a Thinkpad issue!

It does, however, seem to be happening on my other Thinkpad, now that I've updated it. Same configuration (git cloned to each machine). Shift+insert works fine on the second machine, where Insert is a separate key. Pressing the brightness key up or down, which is a special Thinkpad button, causes the same freezing behaviour. The volume up and down buttons don't seem to cause an issue.

Very odd!

Last edited by tealeaf (2019-01-03 14:51:07)

Offline

#3 2019-01-10 14:00:59

tealeaf
Member
Registered: 2014-02-12
Posts: 6

Re: Thinkpad X270: Hang / freeze in X when pressing function keys

As a follow-up, this has resolved itself as of the latest upgrade on 2019-01-10.

I noticed that both the kernel and acpi_call (which seems like it could potentially be related) have both been updated. (4.20.1-arch1-1-ARCH)

No idea what was causing it, but I'm happy that it works.

Offline

Board footer

Powered by FluxBB