Re: Some function keys not working on a ThinkPad W550s

[Celejar <celejar@gmail.com>]

On Fri, 25 Nov 2016 23:27:46 -0200
Henrique de Moraes Holschuh <hmh@debian.org> wrote:

> On Fri, 25 Nov 2016, Celejar wrote:

...

> > Some of the function keys work (e.g., Fn-F5/F6 for brightness down/up),
> > but some do not (e.g., F1-F3 for volume control, and F4 for suspend
> > (suspend works fine out of the box via the Xfce suspend hooks)). Any
> > idea how to fix / troubleshoot this?
> 
> run xev, and check if you get X events.  If you do, you need to get xfce
> to handle these X events somehow (can't help you there).

Okay. Pressing and releasing the Fn keys (I tried by first setting
FnLk, to avoid clutter and confusion with the events for the Fn key
presses and releases) does not generate any KeyPress / KeyRelease
events, just MappingNotify and KeymapNotify events, like so

MappingNotify event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
    request MappingKeyboard, first_keycode 8, count 248

KeymapNotify event, serial 30, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
    keys:  1   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   
           0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0

I usually see just KeymapNotify events, and I can't work out a pattern
for when the MappingNotify ones are triggered, or what the serial nn
numbers mean (they aren't always the same for the same keys).

To clarify: I get these same results both for the Fn keys that work
(brightness control) as well as for those that (seem to) do nothing
(volume control).

What does this mean, and what to do / try next?

> If you don't see anything in xev, use the stuff in package input-utils
> to trace events in the thinkpad-acpi input device, and also on the main
> keyboard input device (lsinput, input-events).  That might help.

...

>   Henrique Holschuh

Thanks much for the help,
Celejar