Weird input behaviour in some Plasma stuff (Kicker, KRunner, privilege window)

[Ilya Bizyaev]

It is impossible to input text properly into some input fields, including the one that asks for sudo password, KRunner, Kicker's search, widget search etc. The problem does not affect anything but plasma stuff.
E.g. when I input "ubuntu", I get "u" or "ub" etc.
I have found out that it is possible to input anything with a big number of repeats. E.g. to input "ubuntu", I can press keys in approximately such order: "ubbbbbuuunnnnnntttttuu". Same for removing characters - have to hit the Backspace key a million times.
The problem has appeared after the Yakkety upgrade.

[Ilya Bizyaev (bizyaev-game-deactivatedaccount)]

As I have found out today, the problem affects only one user - administrator. And what's more, it does not occur under Wayland.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Denny (denny-seniazi)]

This bug affects me too. I have tried deleting cache to no avail. In my case this is not on a fresh install but on an update from Kubuntu 16.04 to 16.10. Would be happy with a workaround (preferably not involving having to change UID).

[Ilya Bizyaev (bizyaev-game-deactivatedaccount)]

So, we have the same case :)

[Denny (denny-seniazi)]

Restarting plasma with:

killall plasmashell
kstart plasmashell

resolves the problem until the next reboot.

[Denny (denny-seniazi)]

The latter is unfortunately true only for Kicker, not for Krunner or privilege windows.

[Denny (denny-seniazi)]

Ok, so krunner also works, if killed and restarted (did not know that this was something separate). The bug however remains on reboot. Which probably means that plasma and krunner get started to early or something like that.

Is there something I could kill and restart to get my priviledge escalation windows (I dont know how this thing is called, when you are asked to provide your sudo pw), as a workaround?

[Ilya Bizyaev (bizyaev-game-deactivatedaccount)]

Can confirm both workarounds.

[Ilya Bizyaev (bizyaev-game-deactivatedaccount)]

I have managed to workaround problems with priviledge windows by restarting polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1:

killall polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1
/usr/lib/x86_64-linux-gnu/libexec/polkit-kde-authentication-agent-1 &

Seems to work fine. Please confirm if it works for you.

[Denny (denny-seniazi)]

Confirmed. Still would like to find where the problem is.

[Ilya Bizyaev (bizyaev-game-deactivatedaccount)]

Sure.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[jarek cichon (jcichonj)]

I faced this issue on Kubuntu 16.04 when upgraded plasma to 5.8.4. Workaround seems to work, except when entering password for openvpn connection.

[Denny (denny-seniazi)]

The workaround also does not work for the wifi-password entry. Changed the Wifi password at work today but it is impossible to enter. Any ideas which process I should restart for this to work?

[Adrian Kalla (adrian-kalla)]

I am affected too after upgrading to 16.10 (from 16.04). Workaround from comment #5 works, but I also have to restart other affected applications (e.g. Yakuake) after restart plasmashell.

[Elias Turner (eliaszoro)]

I get the exact same error. Like comment #15 says the workarounds from comment #5 and #9 work but only for certain text input fields i.e. trying to input my password for administrative activity popups is almost impossible. Same with inputting the wi-fi password. I have to resort to using my browser or something to type my password in and the copy and paste it. Also I have been getting graphical errors (wallpaper stretching) that also can be temporarily fixed by using `killall plasmashell` and then `plasmashell` which seems to be related to this. I made a post about it on askubuntu located here http://askubuntu.com/questions/878815/slight-issue-with-wallpaper-kde-plasma-5-ubuntu-16-04

[Svetoslav (svetoslav80)]

Whoah, finally I found other people experiencing the same bug. I was on Ubunut 16.04.01 plasma 5.7 which was working fine, but somehow broke. Then my troubles began. I installed 5.8 and experienced this bug for the first time. I decided to upgrade to Ubuntu 16.10 - the bug persisted. I upgraded to Ubuntu 17.04 and plasma 5.9 - the bug still persists.

[Elias Turner (eliaszoro)]

I found the solution! It's because ibus is properly installed. so do
`sudo apt remove --purge ibus`
after this, do
`sudo apt install ibus` (or build it from source using the tar.gz file here http://packages.ubuntu.com/xenial/ibus)
reboot your PC.

Now do
`ibus-daemon -d -n --desktop=KDE`

This works perfectly for me and now I can type my password into any prompt, promptly! :P

[Elias Turner (eliaszoro)]

meant to say "it's because ibus is improperly installed." I found this out because I was getting errors opening Synaptic using KDEsudo that basically said "could not find ibus daemon" etc. Now if only I could get Synaptic to run outside of opening it with the terminal...

[Elias Turner (eliaszoro)]

One last thing everyone... you're gonna wanna put that code
ibus-daemon -d -n --desktop=KDE

on your list of autostart programs so it boots up every time the PC does. Also you will wanna change it if you end up using a different desktop environment of course (and possibly why I was having errors in the first place as I have about 3 different desktop environments installed on this system).

[Elias Turner (eliaszoro)]

I am truly sorry for wasting everyone's time with so many junk posts. I finally figured out what to do instead of messing around with ibus which isn't even the default input method. it's this simple, go to a terminal and type

sudo dpkg-reconfigure fcitx

and then reboot. This works perfectly for me and I don't have to bother with ibus-daemon anymore.

[Ilya Bizyaev (bizyaev-game-deactivatedaccount)]

Thank you, you got further in solving this problem than everyone else :)

[Joel Solís (biohazard-zac)]

I can confirm I have the same issue. For now, I run "ibus-daemon -d -n --desktop=KDE" as a workaround when I am using KDE. I have ubuntu 16.10 installed, with KDE and unity.

[Elias Turner (eliaszoro)]

Joel, Please do the following in a terminal:
sudo apt purge ibus
sudo dpkg-reconfigure fcitx
sudo reboot

Everything should be back to normal after this.

[Elias Turner (eliaszoro)]

I will reiterate to everyone that ibus is not the default input method for Ubuntu/Kubuntu/Xubuntu etc. They all use fcitx. If everyone having this problem could just do as comment #25 suggests I strongly believe their problem will be solved.

[Denny (denny-seniazi)]

@EliasTurner Are you sure about this?

I get:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure fcitx
dpkg-query: package 'fcitx' is not installed and no information is available
Use dpkg --info (= dpkg-deb --info) to examine archive files,
and dpkg --contents (= dpkg-deb --contents) to list their contents.
/usr/sbin/dpkg-reconfigure: fcitx is not installed

which sounds strange for a default input method.

[Denny (denny-seniazi)]

This:
https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/keyboard-layouts.html

seems to indicate that fcitx is default only for Asian languages.

[Denny (denny-seniazi)]

Never mind what is default, installing fcitx worked fine. Thank you. Lets see what happens tomorrow when I update to 17.04 ;-).

[Elias Turner (eliaszoro)]

@Denny that Ubuntu documentation only seeks to confuse me more... So if my keyboard input isn't controlled with fcitx, or ibus (I had to install it) then what was it being controller by? 0_o spooky

[Denny (denny-seniazi)]

@EliasTurner I don't know. However, after updating to 17.04 Ibus was reinstalled and I had to purge it again and reconfigure fcitx to get things working.

[kecsap (csaba-kertesz)]

The problem started for me also after some upgrade. Somehow the IM env. variables are set to ibus on my system:

GTK_IM_MODULE=ibus
QT4_IM_MODULE=ibus
QT_IM_MODULE=ibus
XMODIFIERS=@im=ibus

Since KDE/Plasma has its own keyboard icon in the system tray, I advise to run ibus-daemon without icon:

ibus-daemon -d -s

[Chris Guiver (guiverc)]

Thank you for reporting this bug to Ubuntu.

Ubuntu 16.10 (yakkety) reached end-of-life on July 20, 2017.

See this document for currently supported Ubuntu releases:
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Releases

We appreciate that this bug may be old and you might not be interested in discussing it any more. But if you are then please upgrade to the latest Ubuntu version and re-test. If you then find the bug is still present in the newer Ubuntu version, please add a comment here telling us which new version it is in.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for kubuntu-settings (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for plasma-workspace (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for polkit-kde-agent-1 (Ubuntu) because there has been no activity for 60 days.]