Keyboard freaking out

[AndyL]

I've been using 14.04 for a couple of weeks, having switched from Windows XP. On 2 occasions now I've had my keyboard stop working. Both times it was late in the afternoon on a day when I'd been doing a lot of typing. The first time, the keyboard just froze: completely unresponsive, even caps lock/num lock did not change the status of the indicator LEDs. The second time (today), it acted like the shift and D keys were stuck down, spamming D's into the active window. No other keys had any effect.

Logging out didn't clear it - I wasn't able to type a password to log in again. A soft reboot did fix it.

Has anyone heard of an issue like this before? Any suggestions on things to check?

The keyboard is an old PS/2 one that I've used for years. I guess it could be a hardware fault but it would be a coincidence if it has gone wrong just as I've changed operating systems.

[oshunluvr]

Unless something is in the log files, it's seems likely that this is a hardware problem. It could be something interfering with the PS/2 port driver, but I've never experienced or heard of anything like that. Have you tried unplugging the keyboard and re-inserting it? The best test would be to substitute a different keyboard to see if it repeats. It is suspicious that this starts happening after a long day at the keyboard. Maybe your speedy typing is heating it up!

[AndyL]

It just happened again, only a couple of hours after the last reboot so perhaps the time thing is a red herring. A physical problem with the keyboard looks less likely though because even after unplugging the keyboard from the PS/2 port, it carried on spamming the last character I typed into the active window.

I wasn't able to find anything that looked pertinent in the System Log Viewer application - though it looked like the kernel and X logs that I was looking at only went back as far as the last reboot. Next time I'll have to try checking the logs while the problem is happening.

[oshunluvr]

Look at your /var/log/Xorg.0.log to see how your keyboard is detected. Then look in ~/.xsession-errors to see if anything is showing up there. Kinda hard to do if your keyboard is going crazy. It's almost like something is trying to put output into your keyboard device.

[oshunluvr]

BTW, if you go into /var/log you should see the older archived logs there - usually with a .1 or .2 and some get tarballed, but you can read through them. Try an note exactly when the problem starts and look for logs with similar timestamps

[GreyGeek]

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/124406

http://askubuntu.com/questions/51264...sed-repeatedly

[AndyL]

Thanks for the pointers both of you. Interesting to see lots of reports of similar problems going back some years, but no-one seems to have been able to nail down a common cause or trigger. I also found this KDE bug report with symptoms like the first keyboard problem I experienced:
https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=171685
That gives me something else to try if it happens again - does CTRL-ALT-F1 still work?

I had a browse through the logs. Couldn't find anything that looked like it was logged as or just before the problem occurred. .xsession-errors.old had this, but no indication of when it was recorded:

Script for none started at run_im.
Script for auto started at run_im.
Script for default started at run_im.
init: upstart-dbus-session-bridge main process (1956) terminated with status 1
init: Disconnected from notified D-Bus bus
init: startkde main process (2019) killed by TERM signal

The kernel log had this about keyboard detection:

May 15 16:14:16 zeus kernel: [ 0.983522] input: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard as /devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input2

which I'd guess is uncontroversial.

In the Xorg log, here's what I found related to keyboard detection.

First there's this (and a bunch of other lines about the power button) - I assume this is standard?
[ 7.577] (II) evdev: Power Button: Configuring as keyboard

Then this:

[ 7.581] (II) config/udev: Adding input device saa7134 IR (Compro Videomate DV (/dev/input/event4)
[ 7.581] (**) saa7134 IR (Compro Videomate DV: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
[ 7.581] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'saa7134 IR (Compro Videomate DV'
[ 7.581] (**) saa7134 IR (Compro Videomate DV: always reports core events
[ 7.581] (**) evdev: saa7134 IR (Compro Videomate DV: Device: "/dev/input/event4"
[ 7.581] (--) evdev: saa7134 IR (Compro Videomate DV: Vendor 0x185b Product 0xc901
[ 7.581] (--) evdev: saa7134 IR (Compro Videomate DV: Found keys
[ 7.581] (II) evdev: saa7134 IR (Compro Videomate DV: Configuring as keyboard
[ 7.581] (**) Option "config_info" "udev:/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1e.0/0000:0a:02.0/rc/rc0/input4/event4"
[ 7.581] (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "saa7134 IR (Compro Videomate DV" (type: KEYBOARD, id 9)
[ 7.581] (**) Option "xkb_rules" "evdev"
[ 7.581] (**) Option "xkb_model" "pc105"
[ 7.581] (**) Option "xkb_layout" "gb"
[ 7.581] (II) config/udev: Adding input device AT Translated Set 2 keyboard (/dev/input/event2)
[ 7.581] (**) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Applying InputClass "evdev keyboard catchall"
[ 7.581] (II) Using input driver 'evdev' for 'AT Translated Set 2 keyboard'
[ 7.581] (**) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: always reports core events
[ 7.581] (**) evdev: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Device: "/dev/input/event2"
[ 7.581] (--) evdev: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Vendor 0x1 Product 0x1
[ 7.581] (--) evdev: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Found keys
[ 7.581] (II) evdev: AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Configuring as keyboard
[ 7.581] (**) Option "config_info" "udev:/sys/devices/platform/i8042/serio0/input/input2/event2"
[ 7.581] (II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard" (type: KEYBOARD, id 10)
[ 7.581] (**) Option "xkb_rules" "evdev"
[ 7.581] (**) Option "xkb_model" "pc105"
[ 7.581] (**) Option "xkb_layout" "gb"

That's interesting. Looks like the IR remote control of my TV card is detected as a keyboard. I think I'll try unplugging the IR receiver. Maybe that could be picking up some stray input and triggering a problem. I hope I don't end up having to pull the TV card - it works great with Kaffeine, much better than any Windows software I tried with it, and I'd miss it.

[AndyL]

I think I may have got to the bottom of it. It happened again, like the first time the keybaord just stopped working without a key "pressed" so I was able to look find contemporaneous log entries. The kernel log had:
Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0x0 on isa0060/serio0).

Googling that along with keyboard freeze led me to:
https://lists.debian.org/debian-user.../msg01338.html
and
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.p...11#post9820011

There seems to be some problem with the PS/2 port driver and Asus P7P55D motherboards, which is indeed what I have.
Apparently restarting the psmouse module will clear the problem (rmmod psmouse ; modprobe psmouse) - I've created a script with that in so I can try it next time it happens. If that doesn't work, I'll have to switch to a USB keyboard.