Gnome swallowing F7, F8?

[Steve Freitas <sflist@ihonk.com>]

Hi. I'm on Debian Sid, and up until an apt-get upgrade within the last
week or so, everything was working fine.

I'm often in VMware, developing software using an IDE which accepts F7
to start a build. Recently, that stopped working. Other f-keys like F5
continue to work, but F7 is MIA. I figured maybe it was VMware. But then
I noticed that my vncviewer (under Linux), which I always used F8 in,
was now ignoring it.

I cruised through System -> Preferences -> Keyboard Shortcuts and
disabled everything, but that had no effect. I tried using F7 and F8
under a different user account, but it made no difference.

Then I found something really odd: For kicks I tried setting F8 to
trigger the Sound Mute function using Keyboard Shortcuts. After I hit F8
(while setting the key in the Keyboard Shortcuts window), I couldn't
type any longer in any window. I could click on menu items, but I
couldn't get the menus to drop. This persisted until I unplugged and
replugged my USB keyboard, at which point my sound muted (!) and I had
full control back.

Any ideas would be helpful.

Thanks!

Steve