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pawamoy

Member

Registered: 2019-12-10

Posts: 3

[SOLVED] Turn off "mouse keys" / xset led on activates "mouse keys"

After today's reboot, I noticed that my numpad was not working as expected. The keys now move the mouse (or click) instead of typing numbers.

There are many topics here about this problem, but each one of them tells to change "keyboard preferences" with no indication of what program to use, what file to modify or what command to run.

After some tests, I noticed that turning my keyboard LEDs on with

xset led on

also activates "Mouse keys".

Here is the output of xset q with LEDs on and off. I pasted the whole output but only the XKB indicators are of interest.

$ xset led off
$ xset q
Keyboard Control:
  auto repeat:  on    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  00000002
  XKB indicators:
    00: Caps Lock:   off    01: Num Lock:    on     02: Scroll Lock: off
    03: Compose:     off    04: Kana:        off    05: Sleep:       off
    06: Suspend:     off    07: Mute:        off    08: Misc:        off
    09: Mail:        off    10: Charging:    off    11: Shift Lock:  off
    12: Group 2:     off    13: Mouse Keys:  off
  auto repeat delay:  200    repeat rate:  62
  auto repeating keys:  00ffffffdffffbbf
                        fadfffefffedffff
                        9fffffffffffffff
                        fff7ffffffffffff
  bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
Pointer Control:
  acceleration:  2/1    threshold:  4
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  600    cycle:  600
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0x0    WhitePixel:  0xffffff
Font Path:
  /usr/share/fonts/misc,/usr/share/fonts/TTF,/usr/share/fonts/OTF,/usr/share/fonts/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/75dpi,built-ins
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 600    Suspend: 900    Off: 1200
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On

$ xset led on
$ xset q     
Keyboard Control:
  auto repeat:  on    key click percent:  0    LED mask:  ffffe7fe
  XKB indicators:
    00: Caps Lock:   off    01: Num Lock:    on     02: Scroll Lock: on 
    03: Compose:     on     04: Kana:        on     05: Sleep:       on 
    06: Suspend:     on     07: Mute:        on     08: Misc:        on 
    09: Mail:        on     10: Charging:    on     11: Shift Lock:  off
    12: Group 2:     off    13: Mouse Keys:  on 
  auto repeat delay:  200    repeat rate:  62
  auto repeating keys:  00ffffffdffffbbf
                        fadfffefffedffff
                        9fffffffffffffff
                        fff7ffffffffffff
  bell percent:  50    bell pitch:  400    bell duration:  100
Pointer Control:
  acceleration:  2/1    threshold:  4
Screen Saver:
  prefer blanking:  yes    allow exposures:  yes
  timeout:  600    cycle:  600
Colors:
  default colormap:  0x20    BlackPixel:  0x0    WhitePixel:  0xffffff
Font Path:
  /usr/share/fonts/misc,/usr/share/fonts/TTF,/usr/share/fonts/OTF,/usr/share/fonts/100dpi,/usr/share/fonts/75dpi,built-ins
DPMS (Energy Star):
  Standby: 600    Suspend: 900    Off: 1200
  DPMS is Enabled
  Monitor is On
┌ ~
└> % 

So as you can see, xset led on turns on many things: compose, suspend, mail, kana, mute, charging, mouse keys, scroll lock, sleep, and misc.
And ironically, it does not turn on shift lock, which could have been used to turn off mouse keys if I understood correctly...

Why is this happening?

How do I specifically turn on/off individual XKB indicators?

Last edited by pawamoy (2019-12-10 20:14:44)

Zod

Member

From: Hoosiertucky

Registered: 2019-03-10

Posts: 636

Re: [SOLVED] Turn off "mouse keys" / xset led on activates "mouse keys"

Have you checked the wiki?

2ManyDogs

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 4,648

Re: [SOLVED] Turn off "mouse keys" / xset led on activates "mouse keys"

From the xset man page:

led
    The led option controls the keyboard LEDs. This controls the turning on or off of one or all of the LEDs. It accepts an optional integer, a preceding dash(-) or an 'on/off' flag. If no parameter or the 'on' flag is given, all LEDs are turned on. If a preceding dash or the flag 'off' is given, all LEDs are turned off. If a value between 1 and 32 is given, that LED will be turned on or off depending on the existence of a preceding dash. “xset led 3” would turn led #3 on. “xset -led 3” would turn it off. The particular LED values may refer to different LEDs on different hardware. If the X server supports the XKEYBOARD (XKB) extension, leds may be referenced by the XKB indicator name by specifying the `named' keyword and the indicator name. For example, to turn on the Scroll Lock LED: xset led named "Scroll Lock"

Note the last two sentences and the example.

pawamoy

Member

Registered: 2019-12-10

Posts: 3

Re: [SOLVED] Turn off "mouse keys" / xset led on activates "mouse keys"

Wow, so unintuitive haha. I was focusing on how to turn off "mouse keys" and forgot to read the "led" documentation.

I was able to turn off the "Mouse Keys" led (???) with xset -led named "Mouse Keys".

Thank you very much 2ManyDogs.

I hope this post will help users with the same issue!

Last edited by pawamoy (2019-12-10 20:16:11)

2ManyDogs

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2012-01-15

Posts: 4,648

Re: [SOLVED] Turn off "mouse keys" / xset led on activates "mouse keys"

You're welcome. Please remember to mark your thread [SOLVED] (edit the title of your first post).