After Upgrade to 8.10: Keyboard & Mouse Issues after using keyboard to change the display brightness

[Eric]

I upgraded to 8.10 a few days ago, and at first I thought I was having random keyboard/mouse lock-up issues. I then thought this problem only happened when I switched to battery power. I have finally figured out that this problem only happens when I use the function keys on my keyboard to change the display brightness. If I use the LCD brightness app I do not have a problem.

When this problem happens Ubuntu no longer accepts any input from the keyboard (except ctrl+alt+bksp to kill X11), the mouse still moves and allows me to perform left mouse clicks inside of applications and to items in the status bars, but menu items will not appear when clicked (the menu item depresses, but the listing never shows).

I have worked around this problem for now by disabling the auto dim when switching to power mode, and only using the lcd brightness app, but out of habit I accidentally still hit the function keys on the keyboard, so this still bites me sometimes.

Restarting X11 fixes this issue.

System Info:
Dell Inspiron 6400
Nvidia GeForce Go 7300

Upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10

Please let me know if there is anything more that I should include.

Thanks

Eric

[yareckon (yareckon)]

I am also currently affected by this bug in Intrepid. It may have been there last week as well, or it may have appeared in intrepid in the last couple of days. It's bad in that folks could get frustrated and lose their work if they are using gtk based apps where file menus are failing to work. The above is a great description of this bug... but see below for my take on it:

The only thing that I would add is that a single press of the keyboard brightness adjustment combo (Fn + down arrow) seems to register as if the key was constantly down... i.e. brightness goes from 100% and rapidly shrinks to 0% after only one light keypress. The repeated phantom "keypresses" start as soon as you release the Fn key in the combo. For me the brightness heads-up display widget also stays in the foreground on top of other windows.

With these phantom keypresses perhaps the keyboard buffer could be staying filled and this could be causing the keyboard malfunctions and the menus failing to appear on mouseclick? Menus on apps which aren't GTK based still seem to work, perhaps the display of non-gtk menus aren't interrupted by the continual keyboard events?

I am on an Inspiron 640m with intel graphics. I am running Compiz, but this bug also manifests with Compiz disabled.

[IanShortridge (ianshortridge)]

I am affected by this bug. I am running Intrepid on a Dell Inspiron E1505, and had no problems in 8.04. When i change the brightness, it thinks i am holding the function+brightness keys , because it shoots up/down all the way the way it would if i was actually holding the keys down. The brightness window does not go away, leaving me to believe it thinks i am holding those keys down. When it's stuck in that way, i can't type or click on 90% of things.

[Eric (audioguy)]

Our problems seem just a little different. In my case, when I hit Fn + up or down to change the brightness, it only moves the brightness up or down one level and I never get a brightness indicator box. So it does not appear in my case that the keyboard input is stuck. Also, when this happens I can not type anything, but the crtl+alt+backspace does allow me to terminate my X session. Also I have noticed that I can continue to adjust the brightness up and down using the keyboard, just can't type any text or access the menu items using the mouse.

Thanks

Eric

[IanShortridge (ianshortridge)]

when i change the brightness, the right click mouse option disappears. I'm
using the laptop mouse, and if i right click nothing happens. As for the
difference between our bugs with my function keys getting stuck "on", i'm
not sure. I also cannot type anything in when this happens. I haven't
tried a ctrl+alt+backspace when this happens, but i will as soon as i finish
what i'm working on. I also cannot get my suspend or hibernate function
buttons to work. Can you get any function button combos working properly?
Also, i heard that this may be caused by the gnome power manager, so what
i'll try next is killing that and trying the function combos again. Either
way, i'll let you know what my results are.

On Sun, Nov 2, 2008 at 3:46 PM, Eric <email address hidden> wrote:

> Our problems seem just a little different. In my case, when I hit Fn +
> up or down to change the brightness, it only moves the brightness up or
> down one level and I never get a brightness indicator box. So it does
> not appear in my case that the keyboard input is stuck. Also, when this
> happens I can not type anything, but the crtl+alt+backspace does allow
> me to terminate my X session. Also I have noticed that I can continue
> to adjust the brightness up and down using the keyboard, just can't type
> any text or access the menu items using the mouse.
>
> Thanks
>
> Eric
>
> --
> After Upgrade to 8.10: Keyboard & Mouse Issues after using keyboard to
> change the display brightness
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/287328
> You received this bug notification because you are a direct subscriber
> of the bug.
>
> Status in Ubuntu: New
>
> Bug description:
> I upgraded to 8.10 a few days ago, and at first I thought I was having
> random keyboard/mouse lock-up issues. I then thought this problem only
> happened when I switched to battery power. I have finally figured out that
> this problem only happens when I use the function keys on my keyboard to
> change the display brightness. If I use the LCD brightness app I do not
> have a problem.
>
> When this problem happens Ubuntu no longer accepts any input from the
> keyboard (except ctrl+alt+bksp to kill X11), the mouse still moves and
> allows me to perform left mouse clicks inside of applications and to items
> in the status bars, but menu items will not appear when clicked (the menu
> item depresses, but the listing never shows).
>
> I have worked around this problem for now by disabling the auto dim when
> switching to power mode, and only using the lcd brightness app, but out of
> habit I accidentally still hit the function keys on the keyboard, so this
> still bites me sometimes.
>
> Restarting X11 fixes this issue.
>
> System Info:
> Dell Inspiron 6400
> Nvidia GeForce Go 7300
>
>
> Upgraded from 8.04 to 8.10
>
>
> Please let me know if there is anything more that I should include.
>
> Thanks
>
> Eric
>

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. This particular bug has already been reported and is a duplicate of bug 272247, so it is being marked as such. Please look at the other bug report to see if there is any missing information that you can provide, or to see if there is a workaround for the bug. Additionally, any further discussion regarding the bug should occur in the other report. Feel free to continue to report any other bugs you may find.

[Saivann Carignan (oxmosys)]

Sorry, dupe of bug 285323, my mistake