Keyboard keeps freezing randomly

seth · 2022-11-15 22:12:44

It is Dell Latitude E5470.

Looks like it's straight on print.
You can test this w/

xev -event keyboard

Press Alt+Print and release both keys, you should now get press & release for "Sys_Req"

bisarch · 2022-12-15 21:41:16

This hasn’t resolved yet. Right now my machine is frozen. I tried Alt+Ctrl+F6 and logged into the terminal that appeared. I killed the plasma shell using

killall plasmashell

and then restarted it using

DISPLAY=:0 plasmashell&

and switched back to the terminal using Alt+Ctrl+F1. I don’t see any change and the screen is still frozen. I can move the mouse pointer but clicking on any icon doesn’t do anything. Shall I uninstall and reinstall plasma? If yes, how to do that?

seth · 2022-12-15 21:58:18

Shall I uninstall and reinstall plasma?

Unless the current installation is broken, that won't achieve anything.

LC_ALL=C pacman -Qkk | grep -v ', 0 altered files'

1st: after "killall plasmashell", is the process really gone ("ps aux | grep plasma", check the visual status on TTY1)?
2nd: "clicking on any icon" is maybe less helpful of a test - do you get a context menu when right clicking the desktop (assuming you now have an actually new process)?

bisarch · 2022-12-15 22:18:00

seth wrote:

Shall I uninstall and reinstall plasma?
Unless the current installation is broken, that won't achieve anything.
LC_ALL=C pacman -Qkk | grep -v ', 0 altered files'
1st: after "killall plasmashell", is the process really gone ("ps aux | grep plasma", check the visual status on TTY1)?
2nd: "clicking on any icon" is maybe less helpful of a test - do you get a context menu when right clicking the desktop (assuming you now have an actually new process)?

LC_ALL=C pacman -Qkk | grep -v ', 0 altered files'

Running the above door produced tons of output. I don’t know what to look for.

When I ran “ps aux | grep plasma”, it showed two processes “sddm-helper” and “startplasma-x11” with many arguments.

I don’t get a context when I right click the desktop.

bisarch · 2022-12-15 22:23:18

I was thinking about reinstalling plasma because I suspect the issue is because of some remnants of the “make your plasma look like mac” customizations I applied after reading an article somewhere on the web. I have undone some of that but not everything because I don’t remember.

seth · 2022-12-15 22:30:42

Some deviation from the package base is normal and expected - in doubt upload the output.
Unless your macification attempts involved changes in /usr and /etc, I'd rather test the behavior w/ a fresh user account.

Since the problem doesn't seem to be the plasmashell process, try to restart kwin_x11 instead.

bisarch · 2022-12-15 22:57:59

seth wrote:

Some deviation from the package base is normal and expected - in doubt upload the output.
Unless your macification attempts involved changes in /usr and /etc, I'd rather test the behavior w/ a fresh user account.
Since the problem doesn't seem to be the plasmashell process, try to restart kwin_x11 instead.

Restarting kwin_x11 unfroze the GUI. Thanks. Now both my mouse and keyboard are responsive. I can right-click as well. I see the GUI applications but the desktop and panels are not visible. If I minimize an application, I don't have a way to maximize it again.

bisarch · 2022-12-15 23:35:01

Here is the output of the following command.

sudo LC_ALL=C pacman -Qkk 2>&1 | grep -v ', 0 altered files' 2>&1 | tee log

cfr · 2022-12-15 23:45:01

Many of those are files you'd expect to change, but not all of them. I wouldn't expect those results for zoom, for example. For comparison, pacman identifies 0 altered files for zoom on my system. Have you altered /opt in some way? (Ownership? Permissions?)

bisarch · 2022-12-15 23:48:18

cfr wrote:

Many of those are files you'd expect to change, but not all of them. I wouldn't expect those results for zoom, for example. For comparison, pacman identifies 0 altered files for zoom on my system. Have you altered /opt in some way? (Ownership? Permissions?)

No, I haven't altered /opt other than installing software.

bisarch · 2022-12-15 23:54:50

bisarch wrote:

seth wrote:
Some deviation from the package base is normal and expected - in doubt upload the output.
Unless your macification attempts involved changes in /usr and /etc, I'd rather test the behavior w/ a fresh user account.
Since the problem doesn't seem to be the plasmashell process, try to restart kwin_x11 instead.
Restarting kwin_x11 unfroze the GUI. Thanks. Now both my mouse and keyboard are responsive. I can right-click as well. I see the GUI applications but the desktop and panels are not visible. If I minimize an application, I don't have a way to maximize it again.

How do I bring back the desktop and the panels?

V1del · 2022-12-16 00:26:25

plasmashell --replace

seth · 2022-12-16 08:16:49

A random find would be https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/xf86 … mtrack-git - try to remove that.
Otherwise you and cfr might be in the same camp w/ weird kwin stalls blocking the input.
I'd compare "qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin supportInformation" and also cfr, for a quick recap: did you ever experience that w/ the compositor disabled?

cfr · 2022-12-16 17:23:46

If it is the same issue, I'm still trying to get a coredump, but it keeps crashing without producing one or triggering KDE's crash reporter.

AndroGR · 2022-12-23 00:02:02

I had some issues like this recently with my keyboard turning on and off in the span of a second. I literally broke it out of rage (Well, the stands to be exact), but after all, it turns out more recent kernels don't like incorrect USB ports. Switching my keyboard to a USB 3.0 port fixed it. Another option is to try unplugging it for a minute, then replugging it and powering on. It could be that your port is faulty, and this should fix it

cfr · 2022-12-23 01:27:42

seth wrote:

Otherwise you and cfr might be in the same camp w/ weird kwin stalls blocking the input.
I'd compare "qdbus org.kde.KWin /KWin supportInformation" and also cfr, for a quick recap: did you ever experience that w/ the compositor disabled?

Realise I failed to answer this. I never experienced it with the compositor disabled, but I never actually tried with the compositor disabled as it was not happening very frequently and disabling the compositor makes it harder for me to get stuff done. (I know it is meant to only be eye candy, but it is really useful on a 12.5" screen to be able to see one window through another.)

I would be curious to know if the OP is still experiencing the issue. I'm not certain yet, but it was happening once a day or maybe two. The mesa fix landed on my machine on 17th and all of the alarms since have turned out to be false ones. That said, I've had to reboot at least once, maybe more, trying to fix Zoom. (I didn't need to reboot to fix Zoom but I didn't know that.) The only core dumps I got were the udisks2 one, one due to user idiocy and a bunch of them for Zoom. The bug seemed to be very, very good at producing no usable information ....

For the record, I cannot unplug my keyboard without dismantling my laptop, which I believe would be ill-advised during use.

Almehdin · 2022-12-23 02:09:37

I've had a similar issue.. I run a wm and it is heavily individualized. Anyway.. I noticed this happening after I upgraded 'xkeyboard-config' so I downgraded it to 2.35.1 and it works now. I haven't had time to do any further debugging so not sure of the root cause yet.

seth · 2022-12-23 22:41:41

AndroGer is likely experiencing somesthing different that should also find itself reflected in the system journal - and test the behavior of other devices (eg. some flash drive) in that slot.
Did you try less "recent" kernels? (eg. the LTS one)?

@Almehdin, not sure how the keyboard layout could cause random freezes, but please post the output of

setxkbmap -print -query

Almehdin · 2022-12-25 05:47:06

I am not sure either

xkb_keymap {
	xkb_keycodes  { include "evdev+aliases(qwerty)"	};
	xkb_types     { include "complete"	};
	xkb_compat    { include "complete"	};
	xkb_symbols   { include "pc+se+inet(evdev)"	};
	xkb_geometry  { include "pc(pc105)"	};
};
rules:      evdev
model:      pc105
layout:     se

seth · 2022-12-25 08:12:04

That's not some spectaculairy complex config and the Swedish layout has only been subject to some general, rather maintainance changes during the last months (and none for the 2 years prior)
Are you sure this wasn't coincidental? Can you re-create the problem by
a) updating xkeyboard-config
b) only replacing /usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/se w/ the newer version?

Almehdin · 2022-12-25 14:17:19

This has been since summer so yes, I have tried that multiple times and it only happens in the new versions after v2.35. I can diff the new and old version to see if it differ anything.

Arch Linux

#26 2022-11-15 22:12:44

Re: Keyboard keeps freezing randomly

#27 2022-12-15 21:41:16

Re: Keyboard keeps freezing randomly

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#29 2022-12-15 22:18:00

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#30 2022-12-15 22:23:18

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#31 2022-12-15 22:30:42

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#32 2022-12-15 22:57:59

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#33 2022-12-15 23:35:01

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#34 2022-12-15 23:45:01

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#35 2022-12-15 23:48:18

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#36 2022-12-15 23:54:50

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#37 2022-12-16 00:26:25

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#38 2022-12-16 08:16:49

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#39 2022-12-16 17:23:46

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#40 2022-12-23 00:02:02

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#41 2022-12-23 01:27:42

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#42 2022-12-23 02:09:37

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#43 2022-12-23 22:41:41

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#44 2022-12-25 05:47:06

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#45 2022-12-25 08:12:04

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