Caps lock type behavoir.
 

Hi folks,

I'm running Mandrake 10 with a KVM sharing my keyboard, monitor and mouse with some other computers. Every now and again I get this strange situation where my keyboard suddenly starts typing in capitals (the caps lock LED is not on). If I hit the caps lock, the caps lock LED on the keyboard comes on, and I can type in lower case. However, all the keys such as comma, full stop etc behave as if shift is held down. AFAIK, keyboards don't have a shift lock function, but it seems like my keyboard is stuck in it.

If I log out and back in (of Mandrake), the problem disappears. The problem isn't on my other machines if I switch to them via the KVM. All this points to the problem being Mandrake related and not hardware.

Has anyone else come across this? If they have, did you ever find out what causes it and how to resolve it other than logging out and back in?

Cheers,

Rob

Keyboard caps-lock with KVM
 

I have a similar problem.

Using a Linksys 2-port PS/2 switch between an XP box and Ubuntu 9.04 on an HP Pavilion Slimline s7600n, I get keyboard caps-lock problems where punctuation keys are always in uppercase; i.e. the period-key always prints '>' and the slash prints '?'. Switching keyboards cured the problem for about 2 days, then it came back. Only happens in Linux. Switching KVMs to Zonet or simple A/B box caused the keyboard to not connect at all to the Ubuntu system.

In my case, the problem does not go away with reboot.

Surely someone else has seen (and cured) this problem since 2004.

Wow, this is a blast from the past!

I don't actually see this behaviour any more, but I can't say I know why. I know am using Mandriva 2008.1 and a have a different KVM. I even have different computer hardware.

I wonder whether a different distribution would help? Might be at least worth trying a live CD?