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I have no idea what caused this, but as of yesterday or the day before, when I press ESC, the = key seems to be pressed instead. This happens across all programs. And it doesn't seem like the ESC key has been remapped (if this is the proper term) to be =, but that my computer is recognizing a press of ESC as a press of =. For instance, when I have the "Keyboard Layout Chart" up on my screen and I press ESC, = lights up orange. All other keys are working correctly.

Any thoughts on what happened or how to fix it? Is my keyboard just going bad? (The laptap is about 8 years old.)

I have Ubuntu 14.10.

EDIT: My keyboard seems to be fine, at least physically. I followed Fabby's directions (thanks!) and got 0x01 0x81 after pressing ESC.

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kdwarn
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  • Is your keyboard going bad??? Before you try to go to the console, remember that [Ctrl][Alt][F7] brings you back (just remember: [Ctrl][Alt][F7]) Now press: [Ctrl][Alt][F1] to go to a console. In there, log in under an admin user, and type showkey --scancodes If you press [esc] and you get 0x01 0x81 your keyboard is definitely working. Please report back what you got. – Fabby Dec 12 '14 at 02:24
  • Thanks! Keyboard is not going bad - I updated the question. – kdwarn Dec 12 '14 at 16:15
  • Can you do a xev | grep -A2 --line-buffered '^KeyRelease' | sed -n '/keycode /s/^.*keycode \([0-9]*\).* (.*, \(.*\)).*$/\1 \2/p' and see whether the output gives you "9 Escape" 3 times if you press it 3 times? – Fabby Dec 14 '14 at 12:21
  • Yep, I got "9 escape" after doing that. However, after exiting that program, the problem has gone away. Would that command have fixed it? I guess I should have checked to make sure it was still happening before I tried it. But I'm happy no matter the cause. Not having a working escape key was annoying. – kdwarn Dec 15 '14 at 17:44
  • I'll convert the comments to an answer. Please accept the answer and later when you've got more reputation, come back and upvote it... – Fabby Dec 15 '14 at 22:15

1 Answers1

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Is your keyboard going bad???

Before you try to go to the console, remember that Ctrl+Alt+F7 brings you back (just remember: Ctrl+Alt+F7) Now press: Ctrl+Alt+F1 to go to a console. In there, log in under an admin user, and type showkey --scancodes If you press Esc and you get 0x01 0x81 your keyboard is definitely working.

After that, do a

xev | grep -A2 --line-buffered '^KeyRelease' | \
    sed -n '/keycode /s/^.*keycode \([0-9]*\).* (.*, \(.*\)).*$/\1 \2/p'
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Fabby
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