Arch Linux

BAJ716

Member

Registered: 2011-02-13

Posts: 32

[SOLVED] Keyboard stopped working with Gnome 3

My keyboard mostly quit working on me this afternoon.  Everything was fine, then no applications (including vbox vm's and terminals) responded to any key presses.  However, if I pressed the ALT key with the system menu displayed the "Suspend" changes to "Power Off".  Also tried ALT-SYS RQ-K, but that pulled up the print screen file save dialog.  No other keys or combinations I tried worked.

Prior to the loss of keyboard, my computer started running pretty slow.  I figured out I was using most of the 10GB of RAM I have installed, so I started shutting things down.  That was when I noticed the keyboard was gone. So I figured I'd reboot, which I could do because the mouse worked perfectly.  Booting up I was able to type my password to login, but once the Gnome WM was up, no more keyboard (except as mentioned above).  I also tried an external USB keyboard, no difference.

Any ideas?

History:  I've been running Arch and Gnome for 9 months or so.   After a disasterous stretch of updates surrounding Gnome 3, I changed from daily to monthly updates.  My last update was about a month ago.
Hardware: HP Elitebook 8740w laptop, Intel i7-840QM, 10gb of RAM

Thanks,
-Brad

Last edited by BAJ716 (2011-12-02 00:04:55)

BAJ716

Member

Registered: 2011-02-13

Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] Keyboard stopped working with Gnome 3

Found the keyboard layout settings in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/10-evdev.conf, no joy.

Section "InputClass"
    Identifier "evdev keyboard catchall"
    MatchIsKeyboard "on"
    MatchDevicePath "/dev/input/event*"
    Driver "evdev"
EndSection

Looks right to me, but what do I know.

Also found that the CTRL keys are still working, so it's definitely some sub-set of the keyboard that's disabled, like the ones that actually generate visible characters.

Any ideas?

BAJ716

Member

Registered: 2011-02-13

Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] Keyboard stopped working with Gnome 3

This happened to me again today.  I had painfully "corrected" the problem last time by doing a full harddrive image restore from an image that was a month old and then rsyncing my home folder back.

Slightly different scenario this time, I was using a WXP vbox VM and was exporting a huge report into Excel.  When the keyboard stopped working.  RAM usage in Linux was about 5.5GB (out of 10GB available).  Same symptoms, the numbers and letters on the keyboard don't work, the CTRL, ALT, etc. still work as does the mouse.  Rebooting doesn't help, but the keyboard works up to and including logging in via Gnome.  Some config file somewhere must be getting corrupted. 

Maybe it's time I look for something more stable than Gnome.

BAJ716

Member

Registered: 2011-02-13

Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] Keyboard stopped working with Gnome 3

I have /, boot, and home on separate partitions.  I restored all but home from a functional backup, but the problem still remains.

Is there a list somewhere of the folders Gnome creates in the /home folder for user settings?  Maybe if I can move/rename those, it will reset to defaults and I can start from there.

???

BAJ716

Member

Registered: 2011-02-13

Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] Keyboard stopped working with Gnome 3

The "corruption" is definitely somewhere in my home folder.  I created a new user and logging in under that user the keyboard works fine.

Any ideas?  There's quite a bit of stuff in the home folder of a new user.

BAJ716

Member

Registered: 2011-02-13

Posts: 32

Re: [SOLVED] Keyboard stopped working with Gnome 3

I want to kill someone.  "Slow Keys" got turned on again (apparently by holding the shift key too long, or a misinterpreted long press by a busy system).  The bizaare thing is I swear I checked that (or maybe that was on the 4 weeks ago occurence).  I'm too much of a n00b who has burned most of the last 30 hours of my life on this unbelievably stupid problem and I'm too tired to remember.

Anyway, a quick search finds that this bug has been in existence in Gnome for at least 5 years without a fix, I'm completely disgusted and will be finding a new DE.  If they can't fix simple crap like this I'm out..  The sentiments here seem to be similar.
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … +bug/41427

Last edited by BAJ716 (2011-12-01 05:43:53)