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Re: Help: My 'e' and 'c' keys no longer work!

Peter Jay Salzman wrote:

Dear all,

My "c" and "e" keys stopped working in xterms (rxvt, etc) on X.   They
work correctly on the console, so it's not a hw issue.  The only things
of note that happened recently are:
Well, you're not alone. I've had the very same problem, but it went away, and I didn't manage to figure out what went wrong. I experimented with the keyboard layout preferences in gnome, and at some point it went away.
You can fix it from an xterm with setxkblayout XX where the x'es should be substituted with the layout you want. In my case it is 'dk'. Too bad there's an 'e' in the command, but do an ls and paste an 'e' :-) 

FWIW, it is not just you.



1. My system froze this morning.  Required a reboot and fsck.  No
   "bad" error messages, just the usual "zero dtime" stuff.

   I looked for xkb related files in all my lost+found directories, but
   didn't find anything.

2. I apt-get upgraded today.  Can't remember what got upgraded last, but
   I don't think it was X related.

I tried restarting X, then tried shutting the machine, wiggling the PS/2
connector and restarting.  No dice.

However, xfree86 IS receiving events for these keys.  The output of xev
for "e" is shown below (including the output for "r" to compare it with
it with a working key):

   KeyRelease event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0xc00001,
       root 0x58, subw 0xc00002, time 368034, (45,50), root:(49,408),
       state 0x0, keycode 26 (keysym 0x0, NoSymbol), same_screen YES,
       XLookupString gives 0 bytes:  ""

   KeyPress event, serial 25, synthetic NO, window 0xc00001,
       root 0x58, subw 0xc00002, time 368342, (45,50), root:(49,408),
       state 0x0, keycode 27 (keysym 0x72, r), same_screen YES,
       XLookupString gives 1 bytes:  "r"

so SOMETHING is happening.  I killed X and started it again as a
different user.  The "e" and "c" keys still didn't work.  So whatever
happened is global for all users.

I also tried reinstalling all packages that have a file named "xkb":

   apt-get install --reinstall xlibs xlibs-static-pic xbase-clients
                               libx11-6 xlibs-static-dev

but still no dice.  The only keyboard type warning I get when running
startx is:

   The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:
   > Error:            No Symbols named "microsoft" in the include file
   > "pc/us"
   >                   Exiting
   >                   Abandoning symbols file "default"
   Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server

The keyboard stanza of my XF86Config file is:

   Section "InputDevice"
      Identifier  "Generic Keyboard"
      Driver      "keyboard"
      Option      "CoreKeyboard"
      Option      "XkbRules"   "xfree86"
      Option      "XkbModel"   "pc104"
      Option      "XkbLayout"  "us"
      Option      "XkbVariant" "microsoft"
   EndSection

But I don't think this has anything to do with the "e" and "c" keys not
working in X.  Lastly, I use the enlightenment wm.  I tried running twm
instead, but 'e' and 'c' still don't work, so it's not a wm issue.


I'm completely and utterly out of ideas.  The X keyboard is an area of
Linux I know almost nothing about.

Can some kind soul please please please help me figure this out?

Thanks!
Pete




--
René Seindal (rene@seindal.dk)
Seindal Consult
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