hotkeys do not work in ubuntu 12.04

[stepankk]

I use Ubuntu 12.04.1 LTS (all updates are installed) with Unity 2D and I've stumbled upon this issue: sometimes shortcut keys stop working in some windows. For instance, I have these windows opened usually: Google Chrome, Terminal, Skype, Pidgin. Sometimes everything is OK and shortcuts work no matter what window I hit them from, however, hotkeys hit from Skype (most often) or Pidgin (less often) do not work time after time (just no reaction when I hit them), but they still work from Terminal or Google Chrome. Moreover, not all hotkeys are affected, the problem holds only for locking the computer (Ctrl + Alt + L) and other custom shortcuts like executing some command or launching a program (I used `zenity --entry` with `[Super | Ctrl] + [some letter: K, N, etc]` for testing). I expect that all mentioned shortcuts work no matter what window they are fired from. I also should mention, that I had no such problem on Ubuntu 11.10.

[Ubuntu Foundations Team Bug Bot (crichton)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. It seems that your bug report is not filed about a specific source package though, rather it is just filed against Ubuntu in general. It is important that bug reports be filed about source packages so that people interested in the package can find the bugs about it. You can find some hints about determining what package your bug might be about at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Bugs/FindRightPackage. You might also ask for help in the #ubuntu-bugs irc channel on Freenode.

To change the source package that this bug is filed about visit https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/1064248/+editstatus and add the package name in the text box next to the word Package.

[This is an automated message. I apologize if it reached you inappropriately; please just reply to this message indicating so.]

[Book 'em Dano (heymrdjd)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. Unfortunately we can't start working on it yet, because your bug report didn't include enough information.

Please include the information requested at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting. If you have trouble, do not hesitate to ask for more assistance. Thanks in advance.

[stepankk (stepankk)]

An interesting thing, I tried to troubleshoot this issue according to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting , and right after the first step, i.e. killing gnome-settings-daemon, everything became fine: gnome-settings-daemon started again automatically, but all hotkeys work smoothly, no matter what window I fire them from, they work. Does that mean that this bug is in gnome-settings-daemon or I need to carry out some more investigation?
Well, at least I have some kind of workaround now.

[stepankk (stepankk)]

Workaround with killing gnome-settings-daemon works, but the effect lasted for only about an hour, then on some windows (Google Chrome) hotkeys stopped working again.

[stepankk (stepankk)]

the same problem also occurs on Ubuntu 12.10 with Unity 3D NOT in low graphics mode

[stepankk (stepankk)]

here is some more troubleshooting:

0. rebooted the system

1. created a bash script, that just appends current date and time to a some log file:
    #!/bin/bash
    date >> ~/date.log

2. went to System Settings > Keyboard > Shortcuts > Custom Shortcuts, created a new shortcut with command /home/stepank/log.sh and bound it to Ctrl + Shift + M

3. opened console, typed tail -f ~date.log, opened several windows (Skype, Pidgin, Google Chrome, gedit) and pressed Ctrl + Shift + M from all the windows, so far everything worked fine, i saw several new lines with date in console

4. after about 10 minutes the hotkey stopped working if it is fired from gedit (if i hit it from gedit, there appears no new lines in the log, if i hit it from any other window, new lines readily appear)

5. killed gnome-settings-daemon, the hotkey stopped working at all

6. ran xev | sed -n 's/^.*state \([0-9].*\), keycode *\([0-9]\+\) *\(.*\), .*$/keycode \2 = \3, state = \1/p' to grab events. pressing Ctrl + Shift + M with focus on Event Tester resulted in the following lines written in console:
    keycode 37 = (keysym 0xffe3, Control_L), state = 0x0
    keycode 50 = (keysym 0xffe1, Shift_L), state = 0x4
    keycode 58 = (keysym 0x4d, M), state = 0x5
    keycode 58 = (keysym 0x4d, M), state = 0x5
    keycode 50 = (keysym 0xffe1, Shift_L), state = 0x5
    keycode 37 = (keysym 0xffe3, Control_L), state = 0x4
This looks ok. According to https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Hotkeys/Troubleshooting, this is a desktop issue, what should i do next and what information is needed to move this bug to Confirmed state?

[stepankk (stepankk)]

Turned out, that the problem comes from using different keyboard layouts: shortcuts with letters work only in English layout, but not Cyrillic one, so this bug looks like a duplicate of https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/992706 .