Bug 435652

Summary: keyboard goes berserk with Alt_L KeyPress/KeyRelease events
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: James Ralston <ralston>
Component: xorg-x11-drv-keyboardAssignee: Kristian Høgsberg <krh>
Status: CLOSED RAWHIDE QA Contact: Fedora Extras Quality Assurance <extras-qa>
Severity: high Docs Contact:
Priority: low    
Version: rawhideCC: mcepl, xgl-maint
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version: Doc Type: Bug Fix
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2008-03-20 17:26:59 UTC Type: ---
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Attachments:
Description Flags
/var/log/Xorg.0.log from session experiencing berserk keyboard
none
output from "lspci -v" none

Description James Ralston 2008-03-03 01:53:20 UTC 
Description of problem:

For about a week now, whenever I've been running X, my keyboard will
occasionally become "stuck" in a strange state:

- attempting to bring up the GNOME menu does nothing
- lauching applications does nothing
- attempting to type in windows generates gibberish
- pressing Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to abort the X server does nothing

The only way I have found to "recover" from this state is to hold the power
button down until the system powers off.  :(

The only clue I have as to what might be going on is that the gibberish that
appears when I type in an xterm looks like every key is being prefixed with an
escape character.  E.g., if I type "foo", I
see:

^[^f^[^o^[^o

I can't figure out what triggers this strange state: sometimes it happens a few
minutes after starting up an X server; sometimes I'll go for hours without
triggering it.

Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):

$ repoquery --envra --pkgnarrow=installed xorg-x11-drv-keyboard 'xorg-x11-server*'
0:xorg-x11-drv-keyboard-1.2.2-4.fc9.i386
0:xorg-x11-server-utils-7.3-3.fc9.i386
0:xorg-x11-server-common-1.4.99.1-0.23.20080222.fc9.i386
0:xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99.1-0.23.20080222.fc9.i386

How reproducible:

Start up an X session, and simply do random things.  (I think that running
Firefox tends to cause the weird state to occur more frequently, but I'm not sure.)
  
Actual results:

Keyboard becomes useless.

Expected results:

This shouldn't happen.

Additional info:

Due to bug 435649, I can't test against the very latest Rawhide components. 
Once bug 435649 is resolved, I'll try again to reproduce this problem.
Comment 1 Matěj Cepl 2008-03-03 16:13:36 UTC 
When you will be able, please attach your X server config file
(/etc/X11/xorg.conf) and X server log file (/var/log/Xorg.*.log) to the bug
report as individual uncompressed file attachments using the bugzilla file
attachment link below.

Could you please also try to run without any /etc/X11/xorg.conf whatsoever and
let X11 autodetect your display and video card? Attach to this bug
/var/log/Xorg.0.log from this attempt as well, please.

We will review this issue again once you've had a chance to attach this information.

Thanks in advance.
Comment 2 James Ralston 2008-03-03 17:31:46 UTC 
Ok, bug 435649 was fixed; I'm trying now to reproduce this bug.

(The latest updates might have fixed this bug, so I want to make sure it's
actually still reproducible.)
Comment 3 Matěj Cepl 2008-03-03 23:47:10 UTC 
Thanks, let us know.
Comment 4 James Ralston 2008-03-05 04:09:36 UTC 
Created attachment 296842 [details]
/var/log/Xorg.0.log from session experiencing berserk keyboard

Ok, I was able to reproduce this.

If I move my cursor into an xev window while this problem is occurring, xev
shows thousands and thousands of KeyPress/KeyRelease events for Alt_L.	Here's
an excerpt:

KeyPress event, serial 28, synthetic NO, window 0x6a00001,
    root 0x7e, subw 0x0, time 1476693, (137,36), root:(141,55),
    state 0x0, keycode 64 (keysym 0xffe9, Alt_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 28, synthetic NO, window 0x6a00001,
    root 0x7e, subw 0x0, time 1476728, (137,36), root:(141,55),
    state 0x8, keycode 64 (keysym 0xffe9, Alt_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
    XFilterEvent returns: False

I just updated against the latest Rawhide this afternoon, so unfortunately,
this bug is almost certainly still present.

I'm attaching my Xorg.0.log file.  I'm not using an /etc/X11/xorg.conf file. 
I'll attach "lspci -v" output momentarily.

Versions:

$ repoquery --envra --pkgnarrow=installed xorg-x11-drv-{ati,mouse,keyboard}
'xorg-x11-server*'
0:xorg-x11-drv-mouse-1.2.3-4.fc9.i386
0:xorg-x11-drv-ati-6.8.0-3.fc9.i386
0:xorg-x11-drv-keyboard-1.2.2-4.fc9.i386
0:xorg-x11-server-common-1.4.99.1-0.26.20080227.fc9.i386
0:xorg-x11-server-Xorg-1.4.99.1-0.26.20080227.fc9.i386
0:xorg-x11-server-utils-7.3-3.fc9.i386
Comment 5 James Ralston 2008-03-05 04:10:58 UTC 
Created attachment 296843 [details]
output from "lspci -v"
Comment 6 James Ralston 2008-03-05 04:13:10 UTC 
Updating the summary...
Comment 7 James Ralston 2008-03-20 17:26:59 UTC 
I haven't seen this problem for a week or so, so I'm fairly certain it was
squashed in one of the recent updates.  I'll reopen if the problem reoccurs, but
for now, I'm closing with RAWHIDE.