keyboard randomly stops responding

[lizard_b]

Hi forumn, I've been experiencing seemingly random keyboard lockups in lucid lynx 10.04. I am fairly certain than it is not a hardware problem, since when I dual boot into windows it never happens. This has happened since I installed ubuntu on this (new) machine. I am using the proprietary ATI driver.

The symptoms:
Eventually, the keyboard stops responding to input. I think that it always happens while I am using the keyboard, but can't say for sure. Many times, the last key struck repeats into any input it can. It could be the case that that always happens, and it is sometimes an invisible key like ctr alt or shift. The mouse always works, and if there isn't interference from a repeating key I can use the screen keyboard.

Hitting capslock does not make the light come on. My keyboard has an f-lock key, and hitting it does not enable the function keys. alt-sysreq-r does not appear to fix it, alt-sysreq-h does not give me output, and ctr-alt-f1 does not bring a terminal up. alt-sysreq-k does not appear to work, but sometimes it makes the screen lock up. Rebooting makes it go away. Looking at the usual error logs after reboot does not show anything suspicous to me.


There have been many similar reports in many versions of ubuntu in the forums and launchpad, most of which go away spontaneously after a major upgrade (or downgrade, or the person stops using ubuntu) or receive no followup.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+s...ux/+bug/253740
http://wwww.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1561839
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/195805
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=347682
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/X/Troublesho...yboardAndMouse

I have no idea what (if anything) triggers the problem, so I don't know how to reproduce it. Sometimes it will go days or a week without happening, sometimes 10 minutes.

Can anyone suggest what the problem might be, or a potential workaround? If you have an idea, what logs should I be looking at to verify?

[lcayton]

I'm having the identical problem. It is incredibly annoying, as it interrupts my work at least daily.

I'm on 10.04. The keyboard I'm using is NOT usb, but I'm almost positive the keyboard is fine (I've tried swapping). It seems to usually happen in emacs, but this is not surprising as I do 90+% of my work in emacs.

I cannot use the keyboard at all when this occurs, but the mouse still works.

[vanBuuren]

I also am having this problem. Sometimes the keyboard stops responding at all. Caps Lock und Num Lock leds don't respond anymore, the keyboard is completely dead. The mouse still works.

Some days it does not happen at all, however today it already happened twice. It indeed is very annoying.

I am using ubuntu 10.10 with an old ps/2 Keyboard. I am however almost certain the keyboard cannot be the issue. It used to work without any problems on an older computer with ubuntu 8.10.

Do you guys still experience these problems or (and how) have you been able to resolve them? Thanks.

[lcayton]

I still have this problem.

[SidZ]

I have this problem as well. I have posted a thread so I will keep you guys updated if I get lucky.

What kind of computer and keyboard models do you guys have?

[lcayton]

Can you give us a link to the other thread?

I'm on a intel i5 system. The choice of keyboard doesn't seem to matter too much ... the one I'm using now is branded "Cherry", which is some inexpensive german-made thing.

The only slightly unusual part of my system is the Nvidia GPU.

thanks