Red Hat Bugzilla – Bug 112217
Left shift key stops working with auto-repeat
Last modified: 2007-04-18 13:00:14 EDT
Description of problem: The XFree keyboard driver appears to report bogus key press/release events with the left shift key, causing it to cease capitalising typed characters etc. Snipped output from xev shows: KeyPress event, serial 23, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001, root 0x58, subw 0x0, time 324529369, (89,60), root:(441,478), state 0x1, keycode 38 (keysym 0x41, A), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: "A" KeyRelease event, serial 23, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001, root 0x58, subw 0x0, time 324529483, (89,60), root:(441,478), state 0x1, keycode 38 (keysym 0x41, A), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: "A" KeyRelease event, serial 23, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001, root 0x58, subw 0x0, time 324529516, (89,60), root:(441,478), state 0x1, keycode 50 (keysym 0xffe1, Shift_L), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: "" KeyPress event, serial 23, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001, root 0x58, subw 0x0, time 324529516, (89,60), root:(441,478), state 0x0, keycode 50 (keysym 0xffe1, Shift_L), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: "" KeyRelease event, serial 23, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001, root 0x58, subw 0x0, time 324529516, (89,60), root:(441,478), state 0x1, keycode 50 (keysym 0xffe1, Shift_L), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 0 bytes: "" KeyPress event, serial 23, synthetic NO, window 0x3000001, root 0x58, subw 0x0, time 324529653, (89,60), root:(441,478), state 0x0, keycode 38 (keysym 0x61, a), same_screen YES, XLookupString gives 1 bytes: "a" Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable): XFree86-4.3.0-2.90.43 How reproducible: Always Steps to Reproduce: 1. In X application, hold down the left shift key 2. Press another key and keep holding down both for a few seconds 3. View output Actual Results: If key pressed was an A, then I see something like: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaa Number of characters before case shift is seemingly random Expected Results: I should just see upper case A's Additional info: Tried swapping keyboards with no change in output. In console mode, the capitalisation works fine so I don't believe this to be a hardware problem. This keyboard also worked fine with Red Hat 7.3. Video card is a dual-head Matrox G450 operating in xinerama mode. Keyboard is set for for UK. Gnome desktop, but bug also occurs within KDE apps. All updates as of bug-report date have been applied. CPU is Athlon 1.2GHz with 1GB memory - kernel is 2.4.20-24.9bigmem. Note that the right shift key works fine however.
Did the same problem occur with stock RHL 9? How about Fedora Core 1?
I don't have another machine on which to put Fedora but do have another which has not yet been fully updated and still has XFree86-4.3.0-2 from RH9. Admittedly it's running a non-RH kernel (2.4.22-pre4) and has a different graphics card (Intel i810), but on that machine, the left shift works fine. I'll update various packages on it and see if/when it breaks. The keyboard section from my XF86Config on both machines contains: Identifier "Keyboard0" Driver "keyboard" Option "XkbRules" "xfree86" Option "XkbModel" "pc105" Option "XkbLayout" "gb"
After some investigation, this is not a bug but a feature of running gxine, which mimics the sending of the left shift key to stop the X screensaver activating. The offending line is, with version 0.3.3, gtkxine.c:160 - changing the key faked from XK_Shift_L to XK_Shift_R lets the left shift key work properly again, but causes the right shift key to malfunction instead. This is however much more comfortable to my right-handed two-fingered typing :-)