# Keyboard freezes, not system!

## Kingsblue

Hi

Im having huge difficulties with my laptop's keyboard freezing. I have installed lates gentoo dev sources and xorg with xfce4.

I noticed this as soon as I first booted into my new system, after installing from stage one. 1/5 times keyboard locks when system is booted, and are at the login promt (not booted up on windows manager). This means it can lockup 3 times in a row, and then work next 15 times etc. It more or less random. The odd thing is, if I press all keys for about 10 seconds suddently it wakes up an works.

Explain this!!!!!!!!

In XFCE4 windows manager, I normally dont have any problems, but yestoday the keyboard too, suddently locks up and mouse working fine, lots of ram,swap left, and no CPU load. THE WEIRD THING?! When entering something in Ie. Gaim, I can see the system actually register my button pushes on keyboard, as the type marker stops its blinking rythm when I push.

So ive end up with a Gentoo, which knows I type but aint writing sh!t, what is that good fore and what can cause this mystical problem?!

Help appriciated.

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## hecatomb

Hi,

have you ever recognized this freezes with an other operating system?

Maybe you'll give knoppix [1] a shot and test if your keyboard freezes there too.

Are there any relating messages in your syslog when the keyboard is freezing?

Regards,

hecatomb

[1] http://www.knopper.net/knoppix/

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## Kingsblue

Live cd never froze but again, I only booted up on that one pr. installation and sometimes when I tried misc.

- I dont know much about logging, as I havent touched Linux in some years, Ive compiled metalog but havent started it yet, so guess I aint logging yet or what - if I am, where can I found that logfile I need to view?!

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## hecatomb

Hi!

Installing a syslogger (e.g. metalog) is a good start.

Add the logger to your startup (if not done yet):

```
# rc-update add metalog default
```

start it:

```
# /ect/init.d/metalog start
```

The logfiles for metalog should be under /var/log, e.g. kernel messages -> /var/log/kernel

Have a look at the config /etc/metalog/metalog.conf to see where all the other logfiles are.

Regards,

hecatomb

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## Kingsblue

Yeah, I know how to start it and add it to runlevel, but havent had the time to configure it yet. Ill guess ill just start it, with default settings and check the log next time.

I was hoping that someone might know what could cause this problem.

Its not like my keyboard stops responding as it sees it buttons being pressed, but more like it doesnt know what to do, ei sending letter T, when pressing that button.

Also reason I didnt start log, is that Im afraid this incident isnt logged!

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## ikaro

welcome to the club.

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=215629

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## Kingsblue

I actually did see that post, but im not sure the prob. are the same.

I seems their probs. causes their machines to crash, or its both mouse and keyb. mines only keyboard.

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## Armzilla

Any progress? I have similar problem just, wanting to know if you have resolved it.

thanks

arm

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## wickwire

I got it too... comes and goes, not sure how changes occur - in my case it's got to do with gnome. I use FVWM as my window manager, but the environment is gnome - so in order for me to use gnome themes, I have /usr/libexec/gnome-settings-daemon loading with my .xinitrc file, and as soon as X starts up, it finishes loading and once I get wallpaper and theme loaded, the cursor will only blink whenever I press a key on the keyboard, tried gaim, urxvt, firefox... you name it.

Once I kill gnome-settings-daemon, the theme goes away but I can type...

It happened to me about a month ago I think, it got solved on its own, now it's back after a system-update (gnome stuff included, gnome-control-center, the package containing gnome-settings-daemon I think) so I think it's a bug with this one... can any of you confirm this...?

 :Sad: 

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## wickwire

On ths thread, page 8, pcdg solved the problem by removing the .gnome* and .gconf* directories.

Did this as well, users and root (maybe I ran gnome as root sometime in the past, sorry  :Embarassed:  ), the machine went down due to kernel changes, came back up and the keyboard is working flawlessy so far inside X, with FVWM and gnome loaded...  :Smile: 

Indeed some gnome configs were lost, but at least there's a way to know that it's related to those directories...!

Hope this helps!

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