Hello,
I send this message from France, where I have not yet found any answer to my problem, though I'm not the first concerned with..
I've just installed mandriva 2007, and my keyboard ps2 doesn't work with kde.
I assume it's a problem with xfree or kde, and maybe somebody among you has had the same problem or has any idea how to fix it?
Thank's

Wish I had a fix. I have the same problem. It's enough of an annoyance that the first thing I do when I boot up is open a terminal and type a few letters to see if the keyboard is working properly. If not, I exit the desktop session and log in again. That usually clears up any trouble I have.

If you can get into the Harddrake GUI, go to keyboard and run the "Configure Button" at the bottom of the screen. Also do this for your mouse. Goodluck, Mandriva called my keyboard and mouse both "universal" instead of "PS/2".

was curious about this so I looked around
there is this ubuntu kernel bug
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu....15/+bug/54836

<<the workaround is to clatter the keyboard when the system is booting up. seriously>>

worth a try... although probably not relevant to your problem

you mean not at all with kde?
and still it works with gnome, does it not?

maybe try to remove/simplify the language and other keyboard options
in xorg.conf

Hello,

thank's for these answers. I'll try to clatter the keyboard while booting kde (what a strange processing!).
Actually, I've not tried with gnome, because it's not installed on my system.
I suspect something's wrong with xorg or/and my ati driver (the xorg one), because there were not any pb with mandriva 2006 which ran with xfree (so I think ).
I wish I were more expert in linux, so as to look into the xorg config file!

My Keyboard (PS/2) became 'dead', although the NUMS-LOCK light stayed on, *AFTER* my KDE desktop initialized.

Note 1: The graphical screen where I enter my UserID and PW *worked*, and I *was* able to log into a KDE Session as another user. The keyboard worked fine with a GNOME Session, an IceWM Session, or even a KDE Session as a different User-- only the one UserID lost the keyboard as KDE came up (Mouse was fine, I could logout and login as someone else or change my session type.)

Conclusion: The problem (if same symptoms as mine, IceWM and KDE with other userIDs work fine) HAS NOTHING to do with xorg.conf. (UID root works fine too, I do allow root logins so that I can use KATE and Konqueror in really lazy ways, without typing SU all over the place.

- - - - -
The Source of the Problem:

Since I wanted to keep all my panel definitions, I searched for the files which included the characters 'keyb' within only the Directory /home/userID/.kde/share/config/

Out of the HUNDREDS of files in the Directory, only FOUR contain this character string:

kdeglobals
khotkeysrc
kickerrc
kwinrulesrc

- - - - -
The solution:

I copied these four files from a non-Root UserID's .kde/config into the failing UserID, restarted the computer, and my keyboard works again

Probably only ONE of them matters-- and a couple had the same size in both directories, were probably identical. But it was quick, HARMLESS and EFFECTIVE to just replace all of them.

- - - - -
BTW, I'm using PLF NVidia on Mandriva Free 2007, *NOT* ATI. If you can't get other UserIDs to work OK in KDE Sessions, then your xorg.conf *** IS *** still in question.

i have the same problem, installed Mandriva 2007 64, worked fine or a month then stopped. Itś now happened three times, seems to be whenever I restart.

The fix of replacing the four KDE files works but it´s a bit of a pain, does anybody know a more permanent fix?

Sounds like you would look for one of these that had changed and go in and correct it.
As root would be easiest and while there you could check xorg.conf which is in /etc/X11/

No worries, did the file replace and that works. However itś now consistent whenever I log in I have to replace these files.

I was looking for the cause of the problem? Itś odd that the keyboard worked for a couple of months before failing, about the only thing I have done is add panel applets and apps.

I've had the same problem.

My first solution was to reboot to another linux OS and replace /etc with a backup copy. When it happened again, I did a "find -mtime -1 -type f print" on the /etc directory to find out which files had changed.

Replacing only /etc/sysconfig fixed the problem on the next boot.

I too would be interested in a permanent solution!

I have found that although the character keys on the keyboard are dead, I can do a Ctrl/Alt/F1 to go into terminal mode where the keyboard is fully functional. Logging in and going back to the gui by doing Ctrl/Alt/F7, the keyboard is OK, suggesting that KDE is the cause or is reading bad data.

I next I went into the Mandriva control center and changed my keyboard from 104 keys to 105 keys. Since doing that, I have not had the dead keyboard problem. This suggests that the Mandriva control center (harddrake) recreated the corrupt(?) file with the keyboard data.

Worth reporting in http://qa.mandriva.com/ maybe?

I only had the problem twice, and it doesn't happen to me anymore. My MCC keyboard (USA) *is* subtype "105-intl". I don't remember changing it, but when the keyboard failed I definitely went in there via a working desktop (gnome). SO maybe I did switch it, and you other guys might want to give that a look too.

Thank you all, especially JohnG for figuring out which specific file.
I wonder is .bash_profile maybe executed AFTER the file destruction happens? (If so, you could overwrite the bad file within .bash_profile, and you wouldn't have to mess around by hand each time it fails.)

any bash scripts in
.kde/Autostart
is last and is after kde

Has anyone who's had this problem tried to plug a USB keyboard in? I had similar ONCE (using One on a crapped-up windoze box) and a hotplug of the ol' USB keyboard worked.

Anyone running Linux is well advised to have a few hardware items laying around, a USB keyboard and mouse, and a spare video card at minimum. (nvidia is the most Linux friendly vid...)