Random keyboard/mouse inputs

[tiger99]

Dell Inspiron 8100 laptop, which has Nivida Gforce 2 Go graphics. It is difficult to determine exactly what is happening, but every few minutes random screen activity happens, windows flipping from foreground to background, and so on, and on at least one occasion the contents of the address box (URL) in Firefox were pasted as the command line in a shell console that was open. It looks very much like short bursts of random keyboard and/or mouse inputs are happening.

To try to isolate the problem, I have disabled the Synaptics touchpad in the BIOS, and am using an external PS/2 Logitech trackball. No difference.

The machine is dual-boot, I booted into Win 2000 for the first time in many months, and the problem was not evident there, so it is a Linux thing.

I have reverted to the "nv" driver for now, no difference. The xorg, kernel and kde are all fully up to date.

I don't expect this one to be easy. Maybe someone can suggest some meaningful tests that could be done to help isolate the problem?

[askrieger]

Re: Random keyboard/mouse inputs

on at least one occasion the contents of the address box (URL) in Firefox were pasted as the command line in a shell console that was open

That doesn't sound like a hardware problem (unless it's your BIOS). Rather it sounds like you've got some kind some kind of problem in your keyboard driver. If it's not happening in windoze, I doubt that it's your BIOS. Therefore, it's probably a problem with your xserver. The easiest step is to to run "sudo dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" to rewrite your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. Pay particular attention to the settings for your keyboard. Frankly, I don't think that will help, but I've been wrong before.

[tiger99]

Re: Random keyboard/mouse inputs

Thank you for that. I have been away for a while, hence the delay.

I have tried your suggestions, but also found a lot of unnecessary services that were running. It seems, although I may be wrong here having not spent much time on it, that Adept (and maybe all Debian package management systems) set a service to run at boot, or at least on entering the relevant run level, when you install them. Not an unreasonable thing to do, but not what happens in some other distros, where you then have to set up the service to run if you require it. I can't say that either approach is wrong.

Anyway, I turned off all the stuff that I did not immediately need (some of it will be used, sometimes), and the problem got better as various things were removed. Finally I spotted some laptop stuff that certainly does not belong on a Dell, for IBM and Toshiba if I remember correctly, uninstalled it all, and I think all is well now. Certainly it has run for about 15 hours without the glitch.

But I think there might be an X problem, as I have now seen the same symptom on a desktop at work, with an Intel graphics chip, running SuSE, which would have very little in common with the laptop except the core X stuff. But that is obviously for another forum.....

Apart from that, Kubuntu is performing very well indeed, and is now the only distro that I recommend to my friends.

[askrieger]

Re: Random keyboard/mouse inputs

I'm glad you've gotten your system up and running without glitches. Could you post a list of the services that you've stopped? It might help others.

[tiger99]

Re: Random keyboard/mouse inputs

I feel very silly for not having kept an exact record, as I do intend to contribute at least as much to the forums as I receive from them, and an exact record would have been more helpful. But it is approximately as follows:

avahi-daemon
belpcscd.dpkg-new
bluez-utils (don't have Bluetooth)
britty
gdomap
guarddog
guidedog
LCDd
postfix
powertweakd
proftpd
waitnfs.sh
whereami

I do have apache2 and mysql running, seemingly with no adverse effect, as well as all of what I think is normal stuff, cron, dbus and so on.

The laptop packages I removed are somewhat easier to pin down. It was fnfx-client, fnfxd (I think that was the main culprit, as it was the last to be removed, and the problem was still evident occasionally), spicctrl, thinkpad-base, thinkpad-source, toshset, toshutils, tpb, tpctl and vaiostat-source, none of which belong on a Dell. I do have gkrellm-i8k and i8kutils, which are for Dell, installed.

I certainly hope that it does help someone else. Of course packages for "foreign" hardware should not have been installed in the first place, and I don't quite know how it happened. Most probably human error, but I don't remember doing it.....

Still no sign of malfunction. I am going to reboot and try the Synaptics pad now. I don't like it, and prefer an external trackball, but it will be instructive to see if it works OK now.

[askrieger]

Re: Random keyboard/mouse inputs

There are some of those that I've never heard of (and can't find) and others that I I really can't comment on, but I will comment about a few of the things that you've killed.

Avahi: This helps to do totally painless networking between systems that heve it (e.g. Linux systems and specifically debian based systems). You might consider it if you've got other systems that qualify to hook up to your main box.

Bluez: I believe this is installed by default so that new users who have bluetooth will be able to use their keyboards and mice.

Britty: The Braille terminal daemon. Some people find this essential. Most don't.

Guarddog & Guidedog: This is a convenient way to set up protection (NAT, Firewall rules, etc.) for an internet gateway, but not necessary, for a normal desktop if you have a router. and keep it's firmware up to date. I notice that you're running Apache, so you should have USED the dogs to set up your interface but after that I don't believe you need them. I also don't believe that they're daemons.

Postfix: A very good Mail Transfer Agent. If you're running a mail-server for your internal net you need this or something similar, otherwise not.

Powertweak: The ultimate hardware hacker's tool for getting the last few cycles out of your system.

Proftp: If you want to run an ftp server, this is a good one.

Waitnfs: I'd advise adding this back in before you try to shut down your system. This is the thingy that's SUPPOSED (it doesn't always work) to make sure that you don't start to use the network before it's up. When it doesn't work, you have have to start the network yourself later.

Whereami: This is a Gnome panel applet that finds the mouse cursor and reports it's location in screen coordinates, so you can measure things.

My question to you is why you are running Apache and Mysql on a laptop? Don't you need a lot disk space for holding the stuff you're serving? My Dell laptop has a puny 40 GB, 5400 RPM disk.

[tiger99]

Re: Random keyboard/mouse inputs

The problem surfaced again! I put the laptop in its docking station, for the first time in a year, and that triggered it off again. I am now convinced that it is a complex problem involving something like an IRQ conflict between the network card (different one, in the docking station) and the Synaptic input device, as well as an X bug. So I turned off the serial port in the BIOS, to free up an IRQ, having first turned off the Synaptics pad again (which kept working, but killed the PS/2 trackball, flaky BIOS?), then had to get rid of the Synaptics stuff in xorg.conf (and Wacom stuff that keeps getting configured but is not needed). Then I had no pointing device at all, so rebooted into Windoze, trackball worked, Synaptic seen to be disabled (but TCP/IP settings hopelessly messed up with no possibility of correcting them as the address input windows refuse to take the third and 4th bytes, so that is the final end of Windoze here!). Back into Kubuntu, now working!

The reason I suspect an X or Nvidia bug is that when it goes mad, it often leaves one or more outlines of two edges of at least one window, typically top and left, but maybe bottom and right, on the screen which can't be removed even when overwritten by other windows.

But I also now suspect that suspend is involved. Hibernate is turned off, as I know from previous versions of Linux, and even Windoze, that it will not work on this machine. And, it only happens when the network cable is connected.

So, to go mad on occasion it has to be connected to a network, have the Synaptics drivers configured in xorg.conf (regardless of whether they are enabled in the BIOS or not), and probably (not proved yet) have been suspended once. Looks to me like a hardware bug that has not been fully programmed around. But issues involving suspend, or even worse, hibernate, are probably not fixable in many cases as both the graphics card and network card probably can't have their state saved properly. This machine powers down these bits during suspend.....

I think this problem is effectively closed except insofar as it may help someone else, because the machine is set up to never suspend while on mains power now, and the offending entries in xorg.conf have been removed manually, again. And, I will be getting a new laptop sometime soon.

By the way, I fitted an 80GB disk a while ago, when Windoze 2000 failed on the old one, as I needed to remove it to rescue some data (the old disk is OK and is now in a USB box), so there is plenty of space for MySQL and Apache. But I only use them to test ideas for web sites, I would not attempt to serve pages outside the confines of my local network from this machine.

And thanks for your advice on the services, I probably should enable Avahi and Waitnfs as it is likely that these had nothing at all to do with the problem, and will be useful.