Neither PrintScreen, SHIFT+PrintScreen, nor CTRL+PrintScreen keyboard shortcuts work on Trusty

[Mike L]

Running Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit with the latest updates. Version of unity-settings-daemon is 14.04.0+14.04.20140414-0ubuntu1. Possible that this bug either affects unity-settings-daemon, gnome-screenshot, or something else.

I expected PrintScreen to take a screenshot. Ditto for CTRL+PrintScreen and ALT+PrintScreen. All my settings under Keyboard Shortcuts are normal.

Everything worked for every prior release of Ubuntu with the Print key taking a screenshot. Also, neither CTRL+PrintScreen nor SHIFT+PrintScreen work at all. If you reassign the keys for taking a screenshot, to any other keys, gnome-screenshot works as expected. Assigning either of those three key/key combinations to any command does not work. ALT+PrintScreen strangely enough works without issue. Running gnome-screenshot from the terminal also works without issue. Unlike the other bugs I've seen that sound similar, I do not hear a sound at all when pressing any of those three key combinations. Toggling the magic sysrq key does nothing for this issue either.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 14.04
Package: unity-settings-daemon 14.04.0+14.04.20140414-0ubuntu1
Uname: Linux 3.14.1-031401-generic x86_64
ApportVersion: 2.14.1-0ubuntu3
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: Unity
Date: Wed Apr 23 15:13:53 2014
InstallationDate: Installed on 2014-04-17 (6 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 14.04 LTS "Trusty Tahr" - Release amd64 (20140417)
ProcEnviron:
 LANGUAGE=en_US
 PATH=(custom, no user)
 XDG_RUNTIME_DIR=<set>
 LANG=en_US.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
SourcePackage: unity-settings-daemon
UpgradeStatus: No upgrade log present (probably fresh install)
modified.conffile..etc.xdg.autostart.unity.fallback.mount.helper.desktop: [modified]
mtime.conffile..etc.xdg.autostart.unity.fallback.mount.helper.desktop: 2014-04-18T11:00:48.144910
mtime.conffile..etc.xdg.autostart.unity.settings.daemon.desktop: 2014-04-18T11:00:48.144910

[Mike L (mikerl)]

Also this only effects my HP dv7-4285dx laptop after fresh install, and my desktop seems to work fine. I Googled and saw that several KDE users some months ago had a similar issue. So maybe it's related to X, systemd, or something else at the low level? A lot of the users reporting the issue reported that they experienced it only on certain machines, and in every case it was a HP laptop in the dv-whatnot series. This may help trace the problem down.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thank you for your bug report, I can't confirm that issue. Does it work in a guest session for you?

[Mike L (mikerl)]

Unfortunately, no, it does not work in a guest session. I honestly thought I had messed something up on my account and tried that. Doesn't work at all.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

k, not sure what is special about your keyboard/installtion. what keyboard layout do you use? could you use "xev" to see what key events are generated when you use those keys?

[Mike L (mikerl)]

Sorry for the massive delayed response. I'm also having more boot issues I want to get to the bottom of. I'll try asking around in IRC. I was sick for a little bit, too. So my response will come, but it may be a little while.

[Mike L (mikerl)]

xev output from PrintScreen:
KeyPress event, serial 37, synthetic NO, window 0x6a00001,
    root 0x7e, subw 0x0, time 4787314, (124,84), root:(189,598),
    state 0x10, keycode 218 (keysym 0xff61, Print), same_screen YES,
    XKeysymToKeycode returns keycode: 107
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
Keyboard layout is regular US English.

[david.barbion (david-barbion)]

I'm also facing this issue but not at every login.

Keyboard shortcuts (sound, prev, next play/pause), LCD intensity (directly on laptop) and many other shortcuts (CTRL + ALT + T for starting a terminal also) are a shortlist of broken shortcuts.

When this bug occurs, I force a restart of unity-settings-deamon (unity-settings-daemon --replace) and shortcuts are back.