Keyboard issue after upgrade to Mint 18 - numbers on right side do not work
 

My computer has dual boot Ubuntu 16 and Mint 18. The keys work normally when booting in Ubuntu, and all the 'regular' keys work when booting to Mint, but the 10 key pad numbers do not work with Mint.

I've tried another known good keyboard with the same result, so I am guessing that the problem is in the Mint software somewhere.

Does anyone have an idea why the keyboard 10 key pad does not work in Mint but does in Ubuntu?

Thanks

Not sure why it's not working with Mint.

Have you tried pressing the numbers lock key?

During your installation you should of been prompted for the type of keyboard you have.
Did you select the right one? (by country or language)

You can change the keyboard layout and language depending on what DE your running.
https://community.linuxmint.com/tutorial/view/1558

Yes to the numbers lock key
Yes to the language

I opened the keyboard layout and found something interesting. When the keyboard is on the screen and I touch a key it lights up on the screen, showing me I've touched the right key - however when I touch any of the 10 keys on the left nothing happens. For that entire set of keys only the 'Enter' and 'NUM LOCK' keys work.

What is so crazy is that if I boot into Ubuntu all the keys work normally :-(

That's really bizarre.

I'm not sure what else you could try.
Maybe other members will know more:-

If I find a solved solution I'll post it for you.

What DE are you using with your Mint 18?

Sorry to say, I do not know what the DE is or how to find out. Would you tell me?

Do you still have the .iso file from which you burned your Mint installation media? If so, the DE may be part of the filename.

DE means desktop environment, which is often used interchangably with window manager. Another term is GUI (graphical user environment). Still another is simply desktop. Among Mint's DE options are Cinnamon, Gnome, KDE, Mate and XFCE.

Run this command and the terminal will tell you which DE your using-

Thank you both - The DE is "Cinnamon"

Run the keyboard configuration tool from the menu. Go to the layout section and choose to see the options. There you can see keypad behaviour and make sure it's set to "default". Then go to the mouse keys section and make sure that "pointer can be controlled using the keypad" is not selected.

David, I did go to the keyboard section and selected "Restore defaults" but I did not see a place to check or uncheck something about "pointer can be controlled using the keypad". I did uncheck the part about the touch pad since we do not have one attached anyway.

I rebooted to see if restoring defaults made a difference and noticed as I did that that this is Mint 'Sarah'. When I ran the command above in the terminal window it said the DE is Cinnamon. Not sure if that matters?

Anyway, the 10 key pad still does not work :-(

Can you run xev from a terminal and see what happens when you press a sampling of keys one at a time?

You should see a detailed description of the key-down event followed by the key-up event; as xev reads the keyboard at a low level, you can see if your problem is closer to the hardware interface (e.g. a driver) or higher level software (e.g. the OS).

You should be able just to watch the terminal and figure out what's happening, but you can also do "man xev" first if you're interested in more detail.

Post back a sampling (for example the f key from the main keyboard and the 4 key from the keypad); this might help give others another clue to work with ...

Good Luck.

pressing the f key:
KeyPress event, serial 37, synthetic NO, window 0x2a00001,
root 0x39a, subw 0x0, time 9453282, (455,-1), root:(1777,121),
state 0x10, keycode 41 (keysym 0x66, f), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (66) "f"
XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (66) "f"
XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 37, synthetic NO, window 0x2a00001,
root 0x39a, subw 0x0, time 9453410, (455,-1), root:(1777,121),
state 0x10, keycode 41 (keysym 0x66, f), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (66) "f"
XFilterEvent returns: False
pressing the 4 key:
nothing happens :-(

Installing the Mate DE may solve the issue your having.

A lot of members that I have helped over the last 6 to 8 months have had problems with the Cinnamon DE and switching to Mate solved their issue's.

http://winaero.com/blog/how-to-insta...namon-edition/

The fact that xev doesn't even see the number pad keys means that none of the higher level utilities will solve your problem. The next step would seem to be to go to the terminal again and enter:

cat /etc/default/keyboard

You should see something like:

############# Terminal Output: ############################
# KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE

# Consult the keyboard(5) manual page.

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="us"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS=""

BACKSPACE="guess"
############# End Terminal Output #########################

Obviously this will vary depending on what keyboard layout your operating system "thinks" you have attached, but it should confirm whether or not we've narrowed down the problem you're experiencing. As you might guess, the "pc105" refers to a semi-standard 105 key keyboard. I'm sort of betting you have a number in the 80s, but post back what you see.