HP zBook keyboard issue
One more try:
I have a Hewlett Packard zBook G5 with two misbehaving keys: The
unshifted f3 and f4 keys are intended (marked) to decrease and increase
screen backlight brightness. However, both operate identically with the
unshifted f8 key that (correctly) toggles the built-in microphone on or off.
The error appears at the scancode level:
showkey -k reports keycode 190 press and release for all three keys; and
showkey -s reports scancode 0x5a 0xda for all three keys; and to
restate, all three keys do, in fact, toggle the internal microphone.
The installation is vanilla Debian Bullseye except that:
a. It is installed on ZFS (including /)
b. It uses the nVidia proprietary driver and xorg (Nouveau was very
sluggish)
c. It is dual boot, with Windows and Debian on separate NVMe device.
Grub is installed on the Debian device and boots either Linux
and Windows on request.
d. Several non-Debian programs (Eclipse, Foxit PDF reader, Ghidra,
Google Chrome, and Zoom) are installed on /opt and almost certainly
irrelevant to the issue.
An oddity is that after a Debian update a few weeks ago, the two keys at
issue worked as I would like for a few days, then reverted after I
booted Windows and applied the monthly patch set. I do not quite know
what to make of that.
Suggestions for fixing this defect or how to approach resolving it, will
be gratefully received. The zBook is a very nice machine and has only
this defect and the apparently insoluble lack of support for the
proprietary fingerprint reader remaining.
Regards,
Tom Dial
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