Arch Linux

rin

Member

Registered: 2013-12-24

Posts: 31

[SOLVED] Keyboard issue: can't type anything except letters, numbers

I recently upgraded, and after turning my laptop (X1 carbon gen 6) back on, I don't use a login manager, so I'm on the TTY, and all I can type is a-z, 0-9 and a few special characters: `\'#

The shift key doesn't work, so I can't type upper case, or any of the special characters from the numbers row.
The backspace key does nothing.
The return key does nothing, so I can't reach the "enter password" part.
I can't use ctrl+w or ctrl+u to delete things (instead, that just types a letter w or a letter u).
Space bar does nothing.

To check if my laptop keyboard was faulty I plugged in an external keyboard and tried that instead, but no difference. Anyway, the return key definitely works on the grub screen.

Unfortunately I never installed linux-lts so I can't try that.

Does anyone have any ideas? Thanks in advance.

Last edited by rin (2022-12-04 20:53:50)

seth

Member

From: Won't reply 2 private help req

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 75,786

Re: [SOLVED] Keyboard issue: can't type anything except letters, numbers

Unfortunately I never installed linux-lts so I can't try that.

Boot some live distro or the install iso, chroot into the installed system (don't forget to mount the boot partition) and mend that situation?

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rin

Member

Registered: 2013-12-24

Posts: 31

Re: [SOLVED] Keyboard issue: can't type anything except letters, numbers

Unfortunately I never installed linux-lts so I can't try that.

Boot some live distro or the install iso, chroot into the installed system (don't forget to mount the boot partition) and mend that situation?

Now it's flashing up "Welcome to grub" briefly before rebooting.

I initially installed linux-lts without realising what you meant by "mount the boot partition".
Then I mounted boot to /mnt/boot and installed linux-lts again, then copied all the files ending in "lts" from /boot to /mnt/boot. That didn't work.
Then I realised you can actually mount onto /boot even if something is already mounted there.

So my most recent attempt was

mount /dev/nvme0n1p3 /mnt
arch-chroot /mnt
mount /dev/nvme0n1p1 /boot
pacman -S linux-lts
sudo grub-mkconfig -o /boot/grub/grub.cfg

What am I doing wrong?

rin

Member

Registered: 2013-12-24

Posts: 31

Re: [SOLVED] Keyboard issue: can't type anything except letters, numbers

Turns out that I had to run grub-install.

Now that that is sorted, I have managed to boot into lts. I'm on linux 5.15.81-1-lts, but sadly I'm still experiencing the initial problem with the keys not working.

rin

Member

Registered: 2013-12-24

Posts: 31

Re: [SOLVED] Keyboard issue: can't type anything except letters, numbers

I have fixed it!

I chrooted, checked /etc/vconsole.conf and my KEYMAP was set to sunt6-uk
I changed it to uk and rebooted, and now I can type again.