F1 'sticks' and opens new Help windows until memory exhausted

Bug #440321 reported by Bill Smith
14
This bug affects 2 people
Affects Status Importance Assigned to Milestone
xorg (Ubuntu)
Expired
Undecided
Unassigned

Bug Description

This has now happened twice on my 9.04 setup. I'm still not sure what triggers it, in fact I might be accidentally hitting the F1 key. But it certainly continued after I confirmed nothing was touching the top of keyboard so I suspect it might be completely virtual. Either way the result is that the Gnome Help window pops-up endlessly until memory is exhausted and the computer freezes. Somehow, the first time it happened, I was able to get new windows to stop appearing -- maybe I pressed lots of other keys? But this most recent time that didn't seem to work and even though I was able to initiate a logout from the FUSA dropdown, it was unable to 'compete' with the continuing window pop-ups.

Why isn't there some built-in 'safety' to limit how many times the system allows a key to register? I obviously wasn't trying to open hundreds of Help windows!

Is there some other way to track this down? Or, is it simpler just to add a generic safeguard against stuck keys?

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Dependencies:

DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.04
Package: gnome None [modified: /var/lib/dpkg/info/gnome.list]
PackageArchitecture: all
ProcEnviron:
 PATH=(custom, user)
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: meta-gnome2
Uname: Linux 2.6.28-15-generic i686
UnreportableReason: This is not a genuine Ubuntu package

affects: meta-gnome2 (Ubuntu) → ubuntu
Revision history for this message
Rory McCann (rorymcc) wrote :

Look at the xev package ( http://packages.ubuntu.com/search?keywords=x11-utils ), which shows the X events that are being sent from your keyboard. You could also look at the accessibility features (System -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Accesibility) which has options for repeated key presses.

It's most likely that this is physical hardware problem.

Mcb23 (m-c-boulahiya)
Changed in ubuntu:
status: New → Confirmed
Luke Faraone (lfaraone)
affects: ubuntu → udev (Ubuntu)
Revision history for this message
Scott James Remnant (Canonical) (canonical-scott) wrote :

udev isn't involved here, it could be an X issue

affects: udev (Ubuntu) → ubuntu
Revision history for this message
Mohamed Amine Ilidrissi (ilidrissi.amine) wrote :

Thank you for taking the time to report this bug and helping to make Ubuntu better. We are sorry that we do not always have the capacity to look at all reported bugs in a timely manner.
There have been many changes in Ubuntu since that time you reported the bug and your problem may have been fixed with some of the updates. It would help us a lot if you could test the current Ubuntu development version (10.10), or at least the current stable Ubuntu version (10.04). If you can test it, and it is still an issue, we would appreciate if you could upload updated logs by running apport-collect 440321, and any other logs that are relevant for this particular issue.

affects: ubuntu → xorg (Ubuntu)
Changed in xorg (Ubuntu):
status: Confirmed → Incomplete
Bryce Harrington (bryce)
tags: added: jaunty
Revision history for this message
Bryce Harrington (bryce) wrote :

We're closing this bug since it is has been some time with no response from the original reporter. However, if the issue still exists please feel free to reopen with the requested information. Also, if you could, please test against the latest development version of Ubuntu, since this confirms the bug is one we may be able to pass upstream for help.

Changed in xorg (Ubuntu):
status: Incomplete → Expired
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