Comment 36 for bug 41427

I have hit this bug before many times on previous versions of Ubuntu and now on Lucid (10.04). Usually, I go to tty1 (CTRL+ALT+F1 works) and then I kill compiz, which magically restores my keyboard and mouse input.

This time that didn't work so I left the window open and went to another computer to research this. Then I found bug 59616 which is marked as a duplicate of this one.

On one of the comment (Lars) it's mentioned to remove .gconf/desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/host-<hostname>/0/%gconf.xml and retry.
Well, since I had a problem with the mouse too, I moved the whole "peripherals" directory to /tmp and lo and behold, that did the trick.

This is the diff between those 2 directories:

$> diff /tmp/peripherals peripherals
diff -burN /tmp/peripherals/keyboard/host-zod/0/%gconf.xml peripherals/keyboard/host-zod/0/%gconf.xml
--- /tmp/peripherals/keyboard/host-zod/0/%gconf.xml 2010-07-27 11:27:40.192314387 -0400
+++ peripherals/keyboard/host-zod/0/%gconf.xml 1969-12-31 19:00:00.000000000 -0500
@@ -1,4 +0,0 @@
-<?xml version="1.0"?>
-<gconf>
- <entry name="numlock_on" mtime="1280244399" type="bool" value="true"/>
-</gconf>
diff -burN /tmp/peripherals/keyboard/kbd/%gconf.xml peripherals/keyboard/kbd/%gconf.xml
--- /tmp/peripherals/keyboard/kbd/%gconf.xml 2009-10-09 11:06:20.000000000 -0400
+++ peripherals/keyboard/kbd/%gconf.xml 1969-12-31 19:00:00.000000000 -0500
@@ -1,16 +0,0 @@
-<?xml version="1.0"?>
-<gconf>
- <entry name="layouts" mtime="1255100776" type="list" ltype="string">
- <li type="string">
- <stringvalue>us</stringvalue>
- </li>
- </entry>
- <entry name="options" mtime="1247088056" type="list" ltype="string">
- <li type="string">
- <stringvalue>ctrl ctrl:nocaps</stringvalue>
- </li>
- <li type="string">
- <stringvalue>Compose key compose:menu</stringvalue>
- </li>
- </entry>
-</gconf>
diff -burN /tmp/peripherals/mouse/%gconf.xml peripherals/mouse/%gconf.xml
--- /tmp/peripherals/mouse/%gconf.xml 2010-07-23 15:30:08.244407232 -0400
+++ peripherals/mouse/%gconf.xml 1969-12-31 19:00:00.000000000 -0500
@@ -1,5 +0,0 @@
-<?xml version="1.0"?>
-<gconf>
- <entry name="cursor_size" mtime="1279913347" type="int" value="18"/>
- <entry name="left_handed" mtime="1279899048" type="bool" value="true"/>
-</gconf>
diff -burN /tmp/peripherals/touchpad/%gconf.xml peripherals/touchpad/%gconf.xml
--- /tmp/peripherals/touchpad/%gconf.xml 2009-10-09 11:06:20.000000000 -0400
+++ peripherals/touchpad/%gconf.xml 2010-07-27 11:30:29.092314722 -0400
@@ -1,4 +1,4 @@
 <?xml version="1.0"?>
 <gconf>
- <entry name="config_migration_needed" mtime="1255100776" type="bool" value="false"/>
+ <entry name="config_migration_needed" mtime="1280244568" type="bool" value="false"/>
 </gconf>

In short, I changed the behavior of the Menu key to act as Compose and IIRC I set CapsLock to act as CTRL. My visual effects are set to Extra in the Appearance dialog -- which might or might not be related but...