After the problems of the last weekend, starting getting strange stuff where the keyboard would freeze if sat on the screensaver login screen too long. Problem got worse, and after (finally) getting a good (?) yum update, and installing the GIMP, inkscape, libreoffice, and some others, a reboot and no keyboard response at all. Not even switching to a virtual screen.
I can ssh in and systemctl isolate multi-user.target and get a console and the keyboard works just fine in the console, so it's an X11 issue. Found an old thread for F17 where reloading the evdev stuff and generating a new config (xorg -configure, I think) fixed a problem with no keyboard/mouse, and I tried reloading xorg-x11-drv-evdev and runing xorg -configure and got a segfault or something similar and no new configuration file. (No xorg.conf to start with, FWIW.)
Haven't find any relavent error messages in /var/log so far.
Any ideas what's going on here?
-- Joel Rees
On 2013-01-03 13:03, Joel Rees wrote:
After the problems of the last weekend, starting getting strange stuff where the keyboard would freeze if sat on the screensaver login screen too long. Problem got worse, and after (finally) getting a good (?) yum update, and installing the GIMP, inkscape, libreoffice, and some others, a reboot and no keyboard response at all. Not even switching to a virtual screen.
I can ssh in and systemctl isolate multi-user.target and get a console and the keyboard works just fine in the console, so it's an X11 issue. Found an old thread for F17 where reloading the evdev stuff and generating a new config (xorg -configure, I think) fixed a problem with no keyboard/mouse, and I tried reloading xorg-x11-drv-evdev and runing xorg -configure and got a segfault or something similar and no new configuration file. (No xorg.conf to start with, FWIW.)
Haven't find any relavent error messages in /var/log so far.
Any ideas what's going on here?
-- Joel Rees
Quite possibly it's the slow keys feature. I found that if I use gdm to log in, when you hold the shift key for several seconds, the slow key feature is turned on. When this happens, you have to press each key for a long time before it does anything. You can turn off slow key again by again holding the shift key for several seconds. I have since switched to lightdm.
On Thu, Jan 3, 2013 at 2:01 PM, Sjoerd Mullender sjoerd@acm.org wrote:
Quite possibly it's the slow keys feature. I found that if I use gdm to log in, when you hold the shift key for several seconds, the slow key feature is turned on
Yes, I have exactly this problem, specifically on F17. But SlowKeys gets turned on at random, and isn't related to holding down the shift key. Apparently, it's not a bug in the X server itself:
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=816764#c36
But I have no idea what's turning SlowKeys on. It's yet another factor that contributes to F17 providing the worst out of the box user experience of any Fedora release to date.
Tet
On Thu, Jan 03, 2013 at 09:03:57PM +0900, Joel Rees wrote:
After the problems of the last weekend, starting getting strange stuff where the keyboard would freeze if sat on the screensaver login screen too long. Problem got worse, and after (finally) getting a good (?) yum update, and installing the GIMP, inkscape, libreoffice, and some others, a reboot and no keyboard response at all. Not even switching to a virtual screen.
I can ssh in and systemctl isolate multi-user.target and get a console and the keyboard works just fine in the console, so it's an X11 issue. Found an old thread for F17 where reloading the evdev stuff and generating a new config (xorg -configure, I think) fixed a problem with no keyboard/mouse, and I tried reloading xorg-x11-drv-evdev and runing xorg -configure and got a segfault or something similar and no new configuration file. (No xorg.conf to start with, FWIW.)
Haven't find any relavent error messages in /var/log so far.
Any ideas what's going on here?
Do you see excessive or constant hard disk activity at that time? I get into similar states now and then with my laptop, and it's always accompanied by constant hard disk activity. No ideas on what is causing it, though.
On Thu, Jan 03, 2013 at 09:15:32 -0500, "Darryl L. Pierce" mcpierce@gmail.com wrote:
Do you see excessive or constant hard disk activity at that time? I get into similar states now and then with my laptop, and it's always accompanied by constant hard disk activity. No ideas on what is causing it, though.
This might be a kernel issue. I have been occasionally seeing this for at least a couple of months, so it probably came in with 3.6. I didn't have a way to consitently reproduce this and am not sure exactly when it started, so I didn't report this upstream. I do remember seeing a kernel issue reported somewhere that looked like it might be the cause. So it might be being worked on.
On Thu, 2013-01-03 at 09:15 -0500, Darryl L. Pierce wrote:
Do you see excessive or constant hard disk activity at that time? I get into similar states now and then with my laptop, and it's always accompanied by constant hard disk activity. No ideas on what is causing it, though.
Look at the output from "top" and see if you're using swap memory (diskspace) instead of real RAM. That's dead slow, in comparison, and the hard drive will churn like crazy.
I hadn't seen drive swapping since I abandoned Windows, but the current release of Fedora requires so much more memory, than before, that I had to put more into the computer to stop it swapping all the time.
On 01/03/2013 04:03:57 AM, Joel Rees wrote:
After the problems of the last weekend, starting getting strange stuff where the keyboard would freeze if sat on the screensaver login screen too long. Problem got worse, and after (finally) getting a good (?) yum update, and installing the GIMP, inkscape, libreoffice, and some others, a reboot and no keyboard response at all. Not even switching to a virtual screen.
I can ssh in and systemctl isolate multi-user.target and get a console and the keyboard works just fine in the console, so it's an X11 issue. Found an old thread for F17 where reloading the evdev stuff and generating a new config (xorg -configure, I think) fixed a problem with no keyboard/mouse, and I tried reloading xorg-x11-drv-evdev and runing xorg -configure and got a segfault or something similar and no new configuration file. (No xorg.conf to start with, FWIW.)
This sounds like the problem being tracked by this thread: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=816764
The problem appears to be related to a combination of XFWM and GDM. If that's what you have, depressing the Shift key for 20 seconds should re-enable the keyboard.
On 01/03/2013 02:57 PM, Geoffrey Leach issued this missive:
On 01/03/2013 04:03:57 AM, Joel Rees wrote:
After the problems of the last weekend, starting getting strange stuff where the keyboard would freeze if sat on the screensaver login screen too long. Problem got worse, and after (finally) getting a good (?) yum update, and installing the GIMP, inkscape, libreoffice, and some others, a reboot and no keyboard response at all. Not even switching to a virtual screen.
I can ssh in and systemctl isolate multi-user.target and get a console and the keyboard works just fine in the console, so it's an X11 issue. Found an old thread for F17 where reloading the evdev stuff and generating a new config (xorg -configure, I think) fixed a problem with no keyboard/mouse, and I tried reloading xorg-x11-drv-evdev and runing xorg -configure and got a segfault or something similar and no new configuration file. (No xorg.conf to start with, FWIW.)
This sounds like the problem being tracked by this thread: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=816764
The problem appears to be related to a combination of XFWM and GDM. If that's what you have, depressing the Shift key for 20 seconds should re-enable the keyboard.
I use XFWM and GDM and haven't experienced it on my systems. One is using the i915 graphics driver, one is using the radeon driver and two are using the nvidia binary blob via kmod. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- - Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital ricks@alldigital.com - - AIM/Skype: therps2 ICQ: 22643734 Yahoo: origrps2 - - - - When all else fails, try reading the instructions. - ----------------------------------------------------------------------
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Geoffrey Leach geoff@hughes.net wrote:
On 01/03/2013 04:03:57 AM, Joel Rees wrote:
After the problems of the last weekend, starting getting strange stuff where the keyboard would freeze if sat on the screensaver login screen too long. Problem got worse, and after (finally) getting a good (?) yum update, and installing the GIMP, inkscape, libreoffice, and some others, a reboot and no keyboard response at all. Not even switching to a virtual screen.
I can ssh in and systemctl isolate multi-user.target and get a console and the keyboard works just fine in the console, so it's an X11 issue. Found an old thread for F17 where reloading the evdev stuff and generating a new config (xorg -configure, I think) fixed a problem with no keyboard/mouse, and I tried reloading xorg-x11-drv-evdev and runing xorg -configure and got a segfault or something similar and no new configuration file. (No xorg.conf to start with, FWIW.)
This sounds like the problem being tracked by this thread: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=816764
The problem appears to be related to a combination of XFWM and GDM. If that's what you have, depressing the Shift key for 20 seconds should re-enable the keyboard.
Bingo.
Now that I think of it, this started happening after I loaded gdm. And I have a bad habit of dozing off with my finger on the shift key, especially while trying to log in after midnight.
However, knowing that's the bug doesn't help. Particularly since the bug is still open. I can't afford to have my laptop this unstable. Squeeze is replacing Fedora on this netbook tonight. I'll have to try to squeeze Fedora into a single spare partition (fitting since Fedora is going monolithic these days) on the big box for further studying. (Tried it once two days ago, but the security spin installed okay and then couldn't find the kernel after the first yum update.)
Thanks, guys.
-- Joel Rees
On Fri, 4 Jan 2013 19:23:29 +0900 Joel Rees joel.rees@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Geoffrey Leach geoff@hughes.net wrote:
This sounds like the problem being tracked by this thread: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=816764
Bingo.
Now that I think of it, this started happening after I loaded gdm. And I have a bad habit of dozing off with my finger on the shift key, especially while trying to log in after midnight.
However, knowing that's the bug doesn't help. Particularly since the bug is still open. I can't afford to have my laptop this unstable. Squeeze is replacing Fedora on this netbook tonight. I'll have to try to squeeze Fedora into a single spare partition (fitting since Fedora is going monolithic these days) on the big box for further studying. (Tried it once two days ago, but the security spin installed okay and then couldn't find the kernel after the first yum update.)
Fedora has nothing to do with this. If you read the bug report, the same issue has hit Debian and basically all distributions that use GDM. Ubuntu evaded the issue by switching their default display manager away from GDM. And so on...
Just switch the display manager to KDM, lightdm, LXDM, or xdm, and you're good. ;-)
HTH, :-) Marko
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 8:44 PM, Marko Vojinovic vvmarko@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, 4 Jan 2013 19:23:29 +0900 Joel Rees joel.rees@gmail.com wrote:
On Fri, Jan 4, 2013 at 7:57 AM, Geoffrey Leach geoff@hughes.net wrote:
This sounds like the problem being tracked by this thread: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=816764
Bingo.
Now that I think of it, this started happening after I loaded gdm. And I have a bad habit of dozing off with my finger on the shift key, especially while trying to log in after midnight.
However, knowing that's the bug doesn't help. Particularly since the bug is still open. I can't afford to have my laptop this unstable. Squeeze is replacing Fedora on this netbook tonight. I'll have to try to squeeze Fedora into a single spare partition (fitting since Fedora is going monolithic these days) on the big box for further studying. (Tried it once two days ago, but the security spin installed okay and then couldn't find the kernel after the first yum update.)
Fedora has nothing to do with this. If you read the bug report, the same issue has hit Debian and basically all distributions that use GDM. Ubuntu evaded the issue by switching their default display manager away from GDM. And so on...
That's why I don't use sid. :-P
(Have not seen this at all in squeeze.)
Just switch the display manager to KDM, lightdm, LXDM, or xdm, and you're good. ;-)
HTH, :-) Marko
Okay, at your suggestion, I'm trying lightdm.
I see it has both suspend and hibernate available in the login screen, which is a plus for me.
Looks nice, slowkeys is not enabled.
Does not erase all the other problems I've had moving from F16 to F17, or the roughly two weeks of winter holidays I've lost to Fedora when I should have been doing lots of stuff for my present job, cleaning up my resume for when the current contract ends, and following up on three job leads. Not to mention spending time with the family.
Well, I did get some nice family time in today, which is why Fedora is still there. 8-/
-- Joel Rees
-
Bruno Wolff III -
Darryl L. Pierce -
Geoffrey Leach -
Joel Rees -
Marko Vojinovic -
Rick Stevens -
Sjoerd Mullender -
Tethys -
Tim