[Hardy] Volume control keys stopped working on Dell Latitude

[Bogdan Butnaru]

Binary package hint: hotkeys

Hello! I have a Dell Latitude D620 laptop, which has three volume control keys above the keyboard (up, down and mute). They worked correctly ever since Feisty. I have updated to Hardy since the first alpha, and they worked very well. (Including the nicely composited on-screen notice on volume changes.)

However, a couple of days ago they just stopped working. The volume doesn't change, and not even the OSD shows up. What can I do?

I tried to enter "I don't know" as the answer to the "In what package did you find this bug?" question, but Launchpad insisted on a package name. Is this normal? I picked "hotkeys" as it seems to be the most relevant, but I have no idea if that's really the one involved.

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

I removed the package from the bug (it worked...), since I don't even have that package installed. I didn't notice it being uninstalled (and I check what happens on every update), so previously the keys worked without it.

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

I do have hotkey-setup installed, though. I didn't notice any errors in the logs related to it; there are some toshiba_acpi errors, but I don't have a Toshiba so they are probably another bug.

syslog.0:Jan 11 20:39:13 arioch kernel: [ 90.279092] toshiba_acpi: Unknown parameter `hotkeys_over_acpi'

[Ari Torhamo (ari-torhamo)]

Media keys are not working here either. They used to work with Gutsy. My PC is a desktop model and my keyboard is Logitech Comfort Cordless Keyboard. I installed Hardy using Daily CD of 16.1. When I did the installation, I left /home from Gutsy in place (a separate partition), but formatted /.

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

Attaching this to gnome-control-center. After a thousand tests I noticed the volume keys do generate keycodes: 0xa0, 0xb0 and 0xae for volume mute, up and down.

These are setup in gnome-keybinding-properties; the applet displays them just as hex key-codes, though. (For instance, there's another key binding set to XF86AudioPause, although I don't have that key on the keyboard.) They don't take any effect, though, so I assume the problem is here somewhere.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

I believe this bug is closely related to the numlock bug which had recently been fixed. Does the problem occur with the numlock on only, or also when the numlock is off?

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

Very weird. You're right, the keys stop working only when num-lock is ON. When the num-lock is off, the volume keys work. Do you have a link to the num-lock bug, I'm curious about it.

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

I suppose it was bug 182704 you were talking about. I marked this as a duplicate of that one, as indeed after a log-off/log-on (to restart gnome-settings-daemon), the keys work correctly. Weird bug...

[Ari Torhamo (ari-torhamo)]

My keyboard behaves differently now. The volume control buttons (+, - and mute) work as they should, regardless of numlock status. The other buttons (play/pause, stop, previous and next) still don't work, regardless of numlock status. All buttons used to work in Gutsy.

[Bogdan Butnaru (bogdanb)]

Did you check if they are assigned/assignable in gnome-keybinding-properties? I first thought that mute didn't work on mine, but it was just unassigned. And is there still an application listening for them?

If it still doesn't work, you should open a different bug report; this one is about volume keys, and the causes should be different.

[Ari Torhamo (ari-torhamo)]

All keys in question are assigned as they should be. I don't quite understand what you mean by "is there still an application listening for them?"? How could I know that the keys have stopped working, if I wasn't trying to control an application with them?

I'll make another bug report of my problem.

[Chow Loong Jin (hyperair)]

Try re-binding your multimedia keys again. That works for me. If not, try using "xev" in the terminal and see what keys are being sent when you press your multimedia keys.