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Re: Some keys on the keyboard do not work





On 8/10/20 7:56 AM, Eugen Dedu wrote:
Hi,

I have a Dell Latitude 5580 laptop, and have been a happy debian unstable user for 20 years.  I have a very weird problem with its builtin keyboard which slows down my work significantly (ctrl-c, ctrl-x, ENTER etc. do not work):

Since several months ago some keys on my keyboard do not work, in all the applications (e.g. gnome-terminal, emacs, thundebird, firefox). When I press on them, very often nothing happens (usually, I press on them for 10 seconds to make appear the character), sometimes the key appears twice, and sometimes it works flawlessly.  When it works, it works for several minutes or several hours; similarly, when it does not work, it does not for several minutes or hours or days.  I use very often suspend/resume, I also use xmodmap and awesome window manager, but I suppose this is irrelevant.

The problematic keys are found on the last row: xcvm,. (but zbn work) and the bottom keys (ctrl, alt, window, however space works always correctly), plus ENTER key.

I have always thought that it is a X problem which will get fixed. Interesting, a few days ago I noticed that on grub I have the same problem: c and ENTER did not work.  So now I wonder if it is not a hardware problem, however sometimes it works for a long time!

I have looked at Xorg.0.log, without seeing anything wrong.

How can I track down where the problem is, and fix it?

Thanks,
Eugen

For a quick answer, why not borrow a keyboard from some friend, or even a friendly dealer, and see if the problem goes away?
--doug, WA2SAY


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