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Keyboard becomes unresponsive under the GUI.

Hi: being in the GUI, the keyboard suddenly becomes unresponsive and I have no remedy but to press the machine's reset button. I have never observed this failure while in one of text consoles (/dev/ttyN). When booting, the screen first prints data pertaining to the graphics card (Nvidia). Then:

AMIBIOS(c) 2003 American Megatrends, Inc.
P4i65G BIOS P1.00

and line 25 reads:
<big number sequence>-INTEL-P4i6G013-Y2KC

The keyboard is USB. I have it plugged into one of the machine USB jacks.

Code:

root@local:~# lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P DRAM Controller/Host-Hub Interface (rev 02)

00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82865G/PE/P PCI to AGP Controller (rev 02)

00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)

00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)

00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)

00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)

00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)

00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 PCI Bridge (rev c2)

00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)

00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) IDE Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) SMBus Controller (rev 02)

00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801EB/ER (ICH5/ICH5R) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000] (rev c1)

02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)

root@local:~#

This has happened under both slackware 12.0 and slackware 14.0 running Xfce 4. Sometimes, unplugging the keyboard and plugging it into another USB jack brings it again to life. One thing can be relevant. In order for the keyboard to be recognized, in the BIOS setup menu, I have to choose 'Legacy USB enabled: yes'. If I don't do this, after quiting the BIOS menu, which takes me to the bootloader (lilo) prompt, the keyboard will not respond. This is all the information I am aware of at this moment. What can possibly be the mystery behind this strange behavior?

Holy cow...that is strange...

Does it work in single-user mode?

Is hal being loaded properly? Are the appropriate hid modules loaded?

I know it's probably a software issue of some kind, as you mentioned that unless Legacy USB support is enabled, it won't work, but I've had more than my fair share of bad hardware...

Does it happen on ALL USB ports on the system, or just those on one header? I had a board once where the ground pin on one USB header somehow became disconnected. Wiggling the plug would work for a while, then it would quit on me. I eventually repaired it, after I did a little investigation. (Not saying yours is hardware related, but maybe?)

Does it happen with all keyboards, or just one? Again, I had a keyboard where some of the internal connections had worked loose.

Are other USB devices similarly affected?

Does the keyboard work under other operating systems/distributions?

I know you've probably been through all these possibilities...I just really have nothing...

Thanks for your post. I have two machines and two keyboards, both of them USB. Let's call them machine mA and machine mX, keyboard kA and keyboard kX. The failure happens with kdb kX connected to mach mX. Mach mX works fine with kdb kA works fine. Mach mA with kbd kX work fine too. Summarizing:

Code:

mach      kbd      performance

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

mA        kA      OK

mA        kX      OK

mX        kA      OK

mX        kX      fails

The kind of failure is difficult to diagnose because it is not the type "the kbd is unresponsive from the start". First, up to the present moment, the trouble pair, (mX, kX), has never failed when in a text console (/dev/ttyN, N some digit). Only when in the GUI kbd has stopped responding. Second, when entering the GUI, kdb does respond. It is only after some time using it that it stops responding and then, the only way out is to manualy reset the CPU.

Sometimes the failure includes unresponsiveness of the mouse too. Under Debian 7.4, always under the GUI, both keyboard and mouse stopped responding. As the table above shows, I can't speak of a "guilty" keyboard or a "guilty" machine. Rather, of a guilty machine/keyboard pair. The keyboard is

Model no.: GK-070008/U
Product name: KB-220e
Trade name: KYE SYSTEMS CORP.

It comes with a CD labeled KB-220e. But it seems useless for Linux/Unix: there are only two files on it: AUTOEXEC.INF and Setup.exe. Some data gathered during boot.

Code:

i8042: PNP: PS/2 Controller [PNP0f03:PS2M] at 0x60, 0x64 irq 12

i8042: PNP: PS/2 controller doesn't have KBD irq; using default 1

serio: i8042 KBD port at 0x60, 0x64 irq 1

serio: i8042 AUX port at 0x60, 0x64 irq 12

Code:

[    5.398415] [drm] Initialized drm 1.1.0 20060810

[    5.432903] wmi: Mapper loaded

[    5.516606] input: Genius Multimedia Keyboard as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.0/input/input3

[    5.518800] generic-usb 0003:0458:0708.0001: input,hidraw0: USB HID v1.11 Keyboard [Genius Multimedia Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2/input0

[    5.593960] input: Genius Multimedia Keyboard as /devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:1d.0/usb2/2-2/2-2:1.1/input/input4

[    5.596797] generic-usb 0003:0458:0708.0002: input,hiddev0,hidraw1: USB HID v1.11 Device [Genius Multimedia Keyboard] on usb-0000:00:1d.0-2/input1

[    5.600517] usbcore: registered new interface driver usbhid

Kbd X is not PS/2 compatible. The other one, kdb A, is. Not much of a help, is it?

NOTE: I wonder if tinkering with /etc/X11/xorg.conf, section Input device could be of any use.

I forgot to answer your questions.

Quote:

Originally Posted by bcwagne (Post 5159859)

Does it happen on ALL USB ports on the system, or just those on one header? I had a board once where the ground pin on one USB header somehow became disconnected. Wiggling the plug would work for a while, then it would quit on me. I eventually repaired it, after I did a little investigation. (Not saying yours is hardware related, but maybe?)

I have plugged it on all USB jacks on the rear pannel. I have two more on the front which I did not test.

Quote:

Does it happen with all keyboards, or just one? Again, I had a keyboard where some of the internal connections had worked loose.

As the table shows, only with this one.

Quote:

Are other USB devices similarly affected?

It's the only USB device attached to the machine. The mouse is PS/2.

Quote:

Does the keyboard work under other operating systems/distributions?

Under Debian it's the same problem. But only with the X machine. The A machine with the X keyboard works fine under slackware and debian.

Well, I'm afraid I don't know where to go with this one. I'm not sure what to tell you...

It might help to fiddle with the xorg.conf...having a section just for that keyboard might help.

I mentioned hal because a few posts on other boards mentioned it:

http://blog.tpa.me.uk/2009/09/22/if-...-slackware-13/
http://blog.tpa.me.uk/2013/11/11/sla...yboard-issues/

I just really don't know...

I have had similar troubles and as far as I know it's a KDE issue. Something (kwin?) is locking the keyboard.

To confirm, are you able to drop to console when this happens? (Ctrl-Alt-F1). If so you can at least reset things from there.

I imagine REISUB will also work so you don't have to hit the reset button:
http://blog.tpa.me.uk/2009/08/31/magic-sysrq-reisub/

The bad news is, I didn't figure out why it was happening and I do not remember the last time it happened; it just fixed itself.

Just out of curiosity I tried it. It seems kind of a cool reset (equivalent to pressing the reset button), because when it reboot fsck began to check the filesystem. But in my case the entire keyboard is dead. No use to press Cntrl-Alt-F1 or Alt+SysRq. I think it could be fixed by a wise option in xorg.conf. Anyways it's kind of an intermitent or aleatory failure. Also, the machine has a very odd issue: When turning it on, I will have no CRT output. The screen will be blank. I must press the reset button and this time I have output on the monitor. However, with another keyboard, the machine, save the cold start issue, works fine. I think the best solution would be to through the USB keyboard to the trash can and buy a PS/2 one. Thanks for your post.

Definitely sounds like time for the keyboard to hit the bitbucket.

FWIW, reisub is always better for your system than the reset button:

REISUB:

unRaw (take control of keyboard back from X),
tErminate (send SIGTERM to all processes, allowing them to terminate gracefully),
kIll (send SIGKILL to all processes, forcing them to terminate immediately),
Sync (flush data to disk),
Unmount (remount all filesystems read-only),
reBoot.

Reset:
DIE DIE DIE MWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

I see. Well, glad to know you.