How to make the system ignore certain keypresses?

ciden · 11-10-2008, 09:39 AM

I have a old laptop and it is dying.
The latest symptom is that its F9 and Insert keys have died.

The bigger problem however is that now the keyboard is sending strings of F9s or Inserts to Standard Input randomly by itself.

Is there a way to make the system ignore this input completely since i do not use either F9 or Insert. ?

Quote:

karthik@WOLFCORP:~$
karthik@WOLFCORP:~$
^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~^[[2~
-bash: ~: command not found
karthik@WOLFCORP:~$
karthik@WOLFCORP:~$

If this happens in a text window then the cursor starts blinking like mad as it switches between insert and normal mode.

So basically i want the system to ignore the F9 and Insert keypresses.

Please help....

DavidMcCann · 11-10-2008, 11:54 AM

I haven't tried this, but it's worth attempting (in your situation, anything's worth attempting!)

Find your keyboard driver: I think Debian will use (for US English)

/etc/X11/xkb/symbols/us

though on my distro it would be

/usr/share/X11/xkb/symbols/us

It will have lines like

key <TLDE> { [ grave, asciitilde ] };

Add

key <INS> { [ VoidSymbol, VoidSymbol ] };
key <FK09> { [ VoidSymbol, VoidSymbol ] };

If however you have lines like

key <49> { [ grave, asciitilde ] };

then find the scancodes for F09 and INS by running xev in a terminal, and use them to identify the keys.

ciden · 11-11-2008, 02:42 AM

Thank you so much. Using xev I found that the real problem is that the F9 key release event is being recognized as 'Insert'.
The Insert key itself is not to blame !!!

I will restart my laptop and let u know if your approach works.