Lost my tilde key ( ~ )

nakko · 12-06-2005, 11:04 PM

I can no longer type the tilde key, all of a sudden. It was working the other day, I could compose ñ characters and everything. (I am copy-pasting from Character Map right now.)

Essentially, I press the ` key, and I get a `. If I press ` + Shift, I still get `.
A year ago, I was running Sarge on another machine and I had this problem, but I ignored it. I have installed Etch onto this machine, and everything was fine yesterday. Suddenly, tilde vanished! Any hints?

Dead Parrot · 12-07-2005, 02:02 AM

It seems like the keymap you use isn't configured for your actual keyboard. Unfortunately I'm no expert on these things (keymaps and keyboards) but at least you could run (as root) "dpkg-reconfigure console-data" and make sure that the settings match your keyboard.

If that doesn't help and if the problem occurs only during X sessions, then "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg" (or "dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xfree86" for sarge/stable) gives you some extra options for keyboard settings. For American keyboards without "Windows-keys" the model pc101 should be the right choice and with Win-keys it's pc104.

For KDE there's an utility to set keymap in Control Center and I think there might be something similar for GNOME, although I'm not sure (since I don't use KDE or GNOME). There are also command line tools for tweaking keymap settings, like setxkbmap and xmodmap (see the man pages, if necessary).

If you need more help, there are plenty of HOWTO's for Linux keymap problems available on the Internet. Here's a good place to start: http://necrotic.deadbeast.net/svn/xf...ocal/FAQ.xhtml

nakko · 12-07-2005, 10:24 AM

All my other keys work. I have a keyboard with "Windows" keys on them, I configured it as an American 104-key keyboard. And the tilde was working. Wonder what broke it? Well, thanks for your help, I will see if something got un-mapped somewheres...

scottybwoy · 12-07-2005, 04:29 PM

On my keyboard I found that page up and the page down keys also do a ~ in comand prompt, In theory it should work for you too if your using the same keyboard setting as mine en-104 I think, shud keep you going for now untill you work it out properly.

Good Luck

nakko · 02-21-2006, 07:25 PM

I have read several websites, asked one or two of my guru friends, and I have looked into xev & xmodmap as well, and I am not really sure why I am still unable to type a tilde anywhere in X. (On a tty everything is fine.)

Here are some clues:

Code:

$ xmodmap -pke
...blah
keycode  49 = grave asciitilde
keycode  50 = Shift_L
...blah
$ xev
Outer window is 0x3e00001, inner window is 0x3e00002

...blah

KeyPress event, serial 26, synthetic NO, window 0x3e00001,
    root 0x108, subw 0x0, time 120513337, (502,134), root:(515,222),
    state 0x10, keycode 50 (keysym 0xffe1, Shift_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 29, synthetic NO, window 0x3e00001,
    root 0x108, subw 0x0, time 120513843, (502,134), root:(515,222),
    state 0x11, keycode 49 (keysym 0x60, grave), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (60) "`"
    XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (60) "`"
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 29, synthetic NO, window 0x3e00001,
    root 0x108, subw 0x0, time 120514020, (502,134), root:(515,222),
    state 0x11, keycode 49 (keysym 0x60, grave), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (60) "`"

KeyRelease event, serial 29, synthetic NO, window 0x3e00001,
    root 0x108, subw 0x0, time 120514074, (502,134), root:(515,222),
    state 0x11, keycode 50 (keysym 0xffe1, Shift_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
X connection to :0.0 broken (explicit kill or server shutdown).

As you can see, I first press left shift (I could also have pressed right shift with the same results), then key 49. I then of course release key 49 and then the shift key. This ought to result in a tilde, but does not, for some reason. xmodmap (and xkeycaps) both show that key as having the proper keysyms attached to it; they simply do not output correctly in X. Where do I go from here if this thing is not working?

petekmit · 09-12-2006, 09:27 AM

I had the same problem where whenever I typed a tilde with the english keyboard layout, it would default to the ` character. The issue seemed to be due to the number of international keyboards I had set up. I got rid of those, and everything is working once again.

-P