09-28-2020, 05:20 PM
As of this moment of writing, this post has received 149 views but 0 replies. I didn't expect the problem to be that challenging. Or maybe I posted in the wrong forum? Anyway, I'm continuing to have the problem and have been troubleshooting it on my own, so I thought I'd post what I've found.
First, I thought I'd try a different DE than the default KDE to see if the problem might be there. Tried Gnome, LXQt, Xfce but nothing different.
Second, I thought to try different operating systems. I tried Fedora Xfce, Armbian, Arch, and NetBSD booting from a MicroSD. NetBSD wouldn't boot, but the others booted fine. But the keyboard problem remained. With Fedora the problem disappeared for two whole days and I thought the issue might be solved, but it returned and hasn't left.
As for the problem itself, it's very consistent. When I type I get all caps, as if the caps lock key was on. If I do turn on the caps lock key I get lower case letters. I am not able to type numbers except by typing Fn + the number as it is for the numerical pad. I have not found a way to type a hyphen, -, and the Enter key doesn't work consistently. Plus occasionally upper and lower case gets mixed. Not being able to type a hyphen or Enter key makes the terminal pretty unusable for troubleshooting. An external USB keyboard doesn't solve the problem.
The fact that the problem is consistent, i.e. basically a confusion of the CapsLk keyboard with regular keyboard, and not just typing random characters or something, makes me think a solution might be available. Perhaps a systemd service was shutdown. If so, I wonder what that service might be and if it could be re-enabled. Or perhaps it's a more serious hardware problem.
I am also wondering if trying to re-install the keyboard firmware might help, or installing an alternate keyboard firmware. If so, any guidance would be appreciated as to how to go about doing this.
And any thoughts at all would be welcome, better than silence at least.
Kendew
First, I thought I'd try a different DE than the default KDE to see if the problem might be there. Tried Gnome, LXQt, Xfce but nothing different.
Second, I thought to try different operating systems. I tried Fedora Xfce, Armbian, Arch, and NetBSD booting from a MicroSD. NetBSD wouldn't boot, but the others booted fine. But the keyboard problem remained. With Fedora the problem disappeared for two whole days and I thought the issue might be solved, but it returned and hasn't left.
As for the problem itself, it's very consistent. When I type I get all caps, as if the caps lock key was on. If I do turn on the caps lock key I get lower case letters. I am not able to type numbers except by typing Fn + the number as it is for the numerical pad. I have not found a way to type a hyphen, -, and the Enter key doesn't work consistently. Plus occasionally upper and lower case gets mixed. Not being able to type a hyphen or Enter key makes the terminal pretty unusable for troubleshooting. An external USB keyboard doesn't solve the problem.
The fact that the problem is consistent, i.e. basically a confusion of the CapsLk keyboard with regular keyboard, and not just typing random characters or something, makes me think a solution might be available. Perhaps a systemd service was shutdown. If so, I wonder what that service might be and if it could be re-enabled. Or perhaps it's a more serious hardware problem.
I am also wondering if trying to re-install the keyboard firmware might help, or installing an alternate keyboard firmware. If so, any guidance would be appreciated as to how to go about doing this.
And any thoughts at all would be welcome, better than silence at least.
Kendew