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Seemingly at random, my GNOME 3.20 environment on Ubuntu 16.04 has started interpreting every unshifted lowercase L as a shortcut to Gnome Help and every S as a toggle for the on-screen keyboard. The backspace key also does not work, but doesn't seem to trigger anything. This makes typing essentially impossible. Using an external keyboard does not help, but the problem does not occur in KDE.

I checked my custom shortcuts in Gnome Keyboard Settings and there was nothing unusual. There also seemed to be no similar shortcuts, so I'm confident it's not just a case of a meta key misbehaving on my laptop keyboard (although I have also checked that numlock etc are not turned on). Has anyone experienced anything similar or have any ideas for how to investigate?

EDIT: Output of xev -e keyboard

For working d key

eKeyPress event, serial 28, synthetic NO, window 0x1c00001,
root 0xb5, subw 0x0, time 5537245, (226,149), root:(269,256),
state 0x0, 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 28, synthetic NO, window 0x1c00001,
root 0xb5, subw 0x0, time 5537360, (226,149), root:(269,256),
state 0x0, keycode 41 (keysym 0x66, f), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (66) "f"
XFilterEvent returns: False

For Lowercase S:

KeymapNotify event, serial 28, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
keys:  4294967221 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0   
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

L seems to produce no output at all, but that may be because it instantly switches window focus to the help window.

For sudo evtest:

Event: time 1464451107.834624, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 26
Event: time 1464451107.834624, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 38 (KEY_L), value 1
Event: time 1464451107.834624, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1464451107.911967, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 26
Event: time 1464451107.911967, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 38 (KEY_L), value 0
Event: time 1464451107.911967, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1464451111.708492, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 1f
Event: time 1464451111.708492, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 31 (KEY_S), value 1
Event: time 1464451111.708492, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1464451111.824893, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 1f
Event: time 1464451111.824893, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 31 (KEY_S), value 0
Event: time 1464451111.824893, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
Event: time 1464451112.466926, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 20
Event: time 1464451112.466926, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 32 (KEY_D), value 1
Event: time 1464451112.466926, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
dEvent: time 1464451112.583242, type 4 (EV_MSC), code 4 (MSC_SCAN), value 20
Event: time 1464451112.583242, type 1 (EV_KEY), code 32 (KEY_D), value 0
Event: time 1464451112.583242, -------------- SYN_REPORT ------------
NIMISHAN
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Sman789
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4 Answers4

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I would recommend navigating to Gnome Keyboard:

Settings -> Keyboard -> Shortcuts (tab)

Double check the Launcher Help Browser as well as On-Screen Keyboard shortcut in the Launcher and Universal Access categories respectively. The Backspace key should unassign the shortcut and mark it as Disabled. As for the shortcut assigned to your Backspace key, you will have to do a little detective work and follow the same steps. Universal Accessimpossible to typeUnfortunately, I was unable to recreate the same issue and wish you the best of luck!

KofSurp
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    Both the heLp and Screen reader ShortcutS were aLready Set to diSabLed. ProbLem StiLL perSiStS (obviouSLy :D ) – Sman789 May 25 '16 at 19:04
  • Have you checked the Gnome Tweak Tool for any weird discrepancies? There's a list of items in the Typing section that are all marked as disabled on mine. Perhaps one of yours was ticked by accident. – KofSurp May 26 '16 at 02:00
  • Thanks for the suggestion, but everything seems to be set to the most 'off'-like setting. – Sman789 May 27 '16 at 09:08
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Are you sure you are using a right keyboard layout? Keyboard layout settings can be accessed from settings->text entry->+ sign on the bottom part. these are list of keyboard layouts that you can check with.

Rahul Shaw
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  • On Gnome 3 there iS an Input SourceS option under Region and Language which iS Set to EngLiSh UK. – Sman789 May 25 '16 at 19:06
  • try changing that to english us. – Rahul Shaw May 25 '16 at 19:58
  • Already have, it doesn't fix the problem. On the interactive keyboard map, hitting L and S don't cause any keys to light up as they should. I think the problem is at least one level lower than the region settings. – Sman789 May 27 '16 at 09:07
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  1. Test raw keyboard input & mapping: Run sudo evtest in one terminal and then xev -e keyboard in another. Then check those key for both states when they work normal and when they are unusual shortcut. Try one key on a time to have clean output.

  2. Check if you have .xmodmap,.xbindkeysrc or any other keyboard map modifier settings:

    ls -a | grep "^\.x"

    Reference: How do I remap certain keys or devices?

user.dz
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  • I've never used these tooLs before, but evtest seems to be producing normaL resuLts for the keys, recognizing them as S and L. xev -e keyboard, however, treats them as different event cLasses - "KeymapNotify event, serial 28" for S and L, rather than "KeyPress event, serial 28" as produced by other keys. – Sman789 May 28 '16 at 15:41
  • @Sman789, so this is when S has that weird behavior? Could you [edit] question and add output of both commands. Is it possible to get output when S works normal too? – user.dz May 28 '16 at 15:49
  • @Sman789, try create new user then login using it, may be a configuration problem. – user.dz May 28 '16 at 16:01
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    I've added both outputs to the question. I tried creating a new user but the new account had the same probLem on GNOME. – Sman789 May 28 '16 at 16:06
  • @Sman789, Another try, what is your current xinput method? What's output of im-config -m – user.dz May 28 '16 at 16:15
  • ibus.

    Output is: default ibus ibus (blankline) ibus.

     – Sman789 May 28 '16 at 17:43
  • Let us continue this discussion in chat. – user.dz May 28 '16 at 18:38
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Try long-pressing any keys that are in the keyboard shortcut. Sometimes I have keys that aren't being pressed but are being registered. For example backspace doesn't work, everything I do has weird results and if I hit w the window closes. I figured out that it thought Ctrl was being pressed when it wasn't so I long-pressed Ctrl and that fixed it.

Josh M.
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