Random keyboard actions after upgrade from 21.10 to 22.04

Question

Lately (almost five days ago), I upgraded my desktop from Ubuntu 21.10 to 22.04. As soon as I started using the new version of Ubuntu, I noticed that from time to time (i.e., during heavy keyboard use, a few times in an hour):

• the cursor moves to other random locations in the document (as if the arrow or PgUp/PgDn keys were pressed);
• new tabs are opened randomly in browser (as if Ctrl+T was pressed);
• switches to other application windows (as if Ctrl+Tab, Alt+Tab, or something similar was pressed);
• cursor skips to other cells in a Calc sheet (and sometimes deletes or updates other cells);
• even the GNOME terminal screen was maximized once.

This is rather annoying, since I haven't experienced such a thing during my 3+ years of Ubuntu usage on that same hardware (a decent notebook with 6 core i7-8750H, 24GB RAM, SSD for boot and home filesystem) and all recent Ubuntu versions (18.10, 19.04, 19.10, 20.04, 20.10, 21.04, and 21.10).

I am using standard GNOME version (no Wayland) with, NVIDIA (version 510) proprietary driver.

USB mouse and touchpad seem to work OK.

Q: Is there anybody else experiencing similar problems in Ubuntu 22.04? How can I narrow down the cause of the problem?

Please note that, this annoying behavior occurs completely random and I cannot reproduce the problem whenever I want to.

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4 May 2022 Update:

I tested with Live USB Ubuntu 22.04 session for more than one hour. This strange behavior does not seem to occur there during the short test I made. Note however that the Live session does not use NVIDIA graphics, but the internal graphics card with the "NV137 / Mesa Intel® UHD Graphics 630 (CFL GT2)" driver.

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4 June 2022 Update:

• Under Settings → Accessibility nothing non-standard is selected.

• dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration and re-installation of xserver-xorg-input-all do not seem to help.

• ⚠️ However, it seems that my notebook's touchpad is "hyper" sensitive and it registers click commands just when my hands and fingers are over the keyboard, but at least 1 cm away from the touchpad. In my opinion this is the cause and I am testing this right now.

Problem:

I remember, in previous versions of Ubuntu, I was disabling the touchpad, because I was not using it normally (except in very rare cases when my USB mouse was having a problem).

Now, in version 42 of GNOME, the options under Settings → Mouse & Keyboard → Touchpad have no effect and I have to disable the touchpad from command line.

The command synclient Touchpadoff=1 disables the touchpad with one exception: Even though the touchpad stops moving the pointer and taps also are disabled, the touchpad still responds to physical clicks on it.

$ xinput list
⎡ Virtual core pointer                      id=2    [master pointer  (3)]
⎜   ↳ Virtual core XTEST pointer                id=4    [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ A4Tech USB Mouse                          id=12   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ UNIW0001:00 093A:0003 Mouse               id=13   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎜   ↳ UNIW0001:00 093A:0003 Touchpad            id=14   [slave  pointer  (2)]
⎣ Virtual core keyboard                     id=3    [master keyboard (2)]
    ↳ Virtual core XTEST keyboard               id=5    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=6    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=7    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Video Bus                                 id=8    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Power Button                              id=9    [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ Sleep Button                              id=10   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ HD Webcam: HD Webcam                      id=11   [slave  keyboard (3)]
    ↳ AT Translated Set 2 keyboard              id=15   [slave  keyboard (3)]

After looking at the above output, I tried and found out that xinput --disable 14 is also needed to disable the touchpad completely.

So, the question that remains is this:

Why the GNOME options under Settings → Mouse & Keyboard → Touchpad do not work?

Note: It seems that this problem is present in X11, but not in Wayland. However, I have to use X11, because Wayland has many other problems. As another note: I just tested with a "Live ISO" session, and although it runs under X11 too, it does not exhibit this problem.

Answer 1

It seems that my notebook's touchpad is "hyper" sensitive and it registers tap-to-click commands just when my hands and fingers are over the keyboard, but at least 1 cm away from the touchpad!

I remember, in previous versions of Ubuntu, I was disabling the touchpad, because I was not using it normally; except in very rare cases when my USB mouse was having a problem.

However, it seemed that recently (?) the options under GNOME Settings → Mouse & Keyboard → Touchpad started having no effect: The touchpad continued working even when it seemed "disabled".

Initially, I had to use the command xinput --disable 14 to disable it.

But, later I realized that the xserver-xorg-input-synaptics package has some problems with disabling touchpad. So, I just removed it and the ability to change touchpad settings using GNOME Settings → Mouse & Touchpad → Touchpad was restored:

sudo apt remove xserver-xorg-input-synaptics

Answer 2

I suggest you try the following solutions one at a time in their order below and check if the issue is resolved before trying the next solution.

First Solution:

Check under Settings -> Accessibility and make sure nothing unwanted is enabled. Namely the Typing and Pointing & Clicking sections.

Second Solution:

• Reconfigure your keyboard by running the following command in the terminal and following the instructions:

  sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
  

• Then reboot your system.

Third Solution:

• Install(update) input drivers(support) under Xorg like so:

  sudo apt install --reinstall xserver-xorg-input-all
  

  Or under Wayland like so:

  sudo apt install --reinstall libinput10
  

• Then reconfigure your keyboard by running the following command in the terminal and following the instructions:

  sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
  

• Then reboot your system.

Fourth Solution:

If you reached here then the issue is most likely not a keyboard configuration problem ... It's time to consider one of the following two things:

1. Your keyboard is physically broken or faulty and needs replacement.

2. It might not be your keyboard that is causing this behavior but rather something else which could be either hardware/software related (like a faulty/unsupported touchpad, mouse or external additional keyboard) and the following debugging resources are recommended:

   • Debugging Touchpad Detection.

   • Debugging Mouse Detection.

   • Debugging Keyboard Detection.

   • Hardware for Linux.