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I am running Ubuntu-MATE 18.04.4 LTS, and using MATE Terminal 1.20.0.

All of my existing terminal sessions are unresponsive to most keyboard input. Basically, I cannot type anything meaningful into them. For all other applications, my keyboard is working fine.

There are five keys on the keyboard that are working normally: /, *, -, +, and Enter -- but only from the numeric keypad (NumLock has no effect either).

I am able to paste commands into the terminals using either the middle mouse button or the menus. I tried running reset in an effected terminal, but this did not fix anything. There is also a Reset and Clear option in the terminal menu, but this simply hides the prompt and I can find no way to recover it. ctrl-C has no effect either.

When I open a new terminal with ctrl-alt-T, the new terminal suffers from the same defect. However, if I open a new terminal from the Mate menu, it works fine.

I plugged in a different keyboard (wired-USB) and the effect was the same when using the second keyboard.

The easy fix is to kill my existing terminal sessions and start fresh. I would prefer not to do that since I have many open terminal windows and tabs and I don't want to lose my state. Also, if there is a systemic problem, I would like to know how to deal with this in the future.

A few times in recent weeks, I have experienced similar problems with other applications (maybe Chromium-browser), so this may be related.

Is there a command or magic key sequence that might allow me to resume my existing terminal sessions?

Brent Bradburn
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  • If you have not set customs profiles for your MATE terminal you can reset its settings with dconf reset -f /org/mate/terminal/ and retry. – N0rbert Apr 12 '20 at 08:10
  • Maybe try stty echo? If you have stty -echo set, nothing will show as you type. But the trick here is, you can still type, and it will still use the command you typed, you just won't be able to see it. – Marshall Whittaker Apr 12 '20 at 13:36
  • No effect (on this problem) from the suggestions in the prior two comments. However, my desktop went seriously haywire when I accidentally ran dconf reset -f /org/mate/ -- I don't recommend it (it reset all of my desktop customizations, including panels and workspaces). – Brent Bradburn Apr 12 '20 at 19:55
  • The potential "culprit" that I was trying to remember is ibus, which came to my attention by showing up in the panel after I rebooted. – Brent Bradburn Apr 13 '20 at 00:12
  • The previously mentioned command that I accidentally ran, actually reset every custom setting in every MATE application. It was like starting from a clean install of Ubuntu. – Brent Bradburn Apr 14 '20 at 01:20
  • Oooh -- It even reset my "mate tweak tool" settings (Window manager), which I finally realized is why my desktop has been buggy (sadly, it works best with "No compositor"). – Brent Bradburn May 04 '20 at 16:50

1 Answers1

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Something tells me that it was ibus that needed a kick...

Brent Bradburn
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    Today I resolved my keyboard-in-terminal problem using "Quit" from the IBus panel icon (Looks like "EN", for English on mine). Maybe I could have just used "Restart". – Brent Bradburn Nov 05 '20 at 03:31
  • Today I resolved a dead-keyboard for one browser instance using "Restart" from the IBus panel icon. – Brent Bradburn Apr 16 '21 at 21:19
  • It's amazing how many random quirks can be fixed in Ubuntu by knowing how to restart the underlying service (or application). – Brent Bradburn Apr 16 '21 at 21:22
  • IBus notification -> Restart. Once again, this solution has saved me from a disruptive application restart. – Brent Bradburn Jul 13 '21 at 15:39
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    I just had exactly the same situation, but in terminator terminals. I've opened a MATE terminal and executed ibus restart and it unlocked the terminator ones. This saves my day :D – juanra Dec 03 '21 at 07:43