Keyboard map randomly changed [SOLVED]

[slackline]

Hi,

Resumed my computer this morning from hibernate and went to login to the WebUI of my router but couldn't, password consistently failed, even though I could login to it from my phone.

Quickly realised that the keyboard was not typing correctly, I would type one character and get another so rebooted but the problem persists and I can not login to the computer (although can thankfully SSH into it).

The mappings I'm seeing are strange, those I've found so far are on SLIM are...

[krinn]

remember evdev handle device on events only, and events are:
- device is present when boot (not booting the computer, booting X11)
- device is plug
- device is unplug

But once evdev has done its work, it will never do it again, waiting for an event to appears (in this case, the only events left could be "device is unplug" because X11 is already start and device is already plug).
It mean if someone alter your keyboard after you have start X11 and you don't unplug/replug the keyboard, evdev will never reconfigure the keyboard, leaving it in the state it is.
And you have indeed a "someone" that do that in many UI, i'm using mate, so i could only point that "someone" for mate: mate-keyboard-properties or mate-keybinding-properties, i think one is use to assign multimedia keys (the ones use to raise/lower volume...) and the other to alter the mapping (base on language, such as using azerty or qwerty...).
Also, using these kind of programs generally are aiming for a specific keyboard, and plugin a keyboard that is not the same as the one specified in them lead to the program not doing anything on the keyboard, leaving evdev handling it alone.
So if you have an "ms something" keyboard with its keys redefine, plugin a keyboard that is not "ms something" specific will lead to multimedia keys not assign, keyboard mapping left as define by evdev...

You should check if "someone" is bugging your keyboard, as i said, who is "someone" depends on the UI.

hint1: i'm using azerty keyboard mapping, and indeed i had myself too the problem about mapping keyboard and password, an easy way to get out of the blur is just typing your password in the user section (make sure none is looking) and you'll easy see if you have trouble at typing your password or if your mapping mismatch.
hint2: your keyboard class file match any devices and as such evdev try apply it to any device, such as your audio, you should specify that rule is only for keyboard device, which is just as easy as adding MatchIsKeyboard "on" inside your 10-keyboard.conf file. It won't change a lot, except you will remove error messages that the device cannot be handle as a keyboard because it is not a keyboard

[mike155]

Hi slackline,

you could use xev. If I press key "x" on my keyboard, it shows that key 53 was pressed and that it was translated to an "x".

[slackline]

Thank you both for your responses.

@krinn : Its an issue outside of X11/xorg so I'm not too concerned about evdev, was just giving it a whirl. I use Xfce but have the same problems at a plain console so I think the issue is more likely hardware.

The strange thing is this happened right in the middle of a session after having resumed from hibernate, last night keys mapped fine and worked. This morning nothing doing, I used your hint1 to find out that this was a problem in the first place and was how I could list the erroneous key mapping in my above post. As its the same at a console and a spare USB keyboard works ok (I'm using it now) I'm inclined to think it is a keyboard hardware problem rather than evdev/Xorg configuration.

@mike155 : Had forgotten about xev, have used it in the past to map media keys on the Ergonomic Keyboard.

Firing it up and then hitting 'z' on the problematic keyboard gives...

[slackline]

Bit the bullet and ordered a new M$ Ergonomic 4000 keyboard, plugged it in and key maps are perfect, strongly suggesting it was failed hardware. Not bad as I'd had the thing for about a decade.

Thanks for @krinn and @mike155 for your assistance.

slackline
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