keyboard failure that doesn't seem to be hardware

[Ed Greshko]

On 10/11/2012 08:43 AM, Paul Allen Newell wrote:
> Hello:
>
> I am doing my first F17 install on i686 Xfce and, for the most part, everything is coming up nicely. However, I am noticing that sometimes the keyboard becomes unresponsive. I can't seem to find a reason, it just happens. My first sense was that it was a hardware problem.
>
> However, one time I decided to let the session time out so that when I had moved the mouse, I got the "re-enter passwd" dialog box to get back to my session. As could be expected, I couldn't type my password in. So I tried selecting new user login and, lo and behold, if I clicked on myself, it let me enter a password. However, it then immediately went back to the "re-enter passwd" from the session time out and the keyboard was dead.
>
> Net result is I find it hard to believe that the hardware is the problem. But I can't figure out what would be locking up the keyboard so that it would appear dead. I also note that I had multiple windows open plus firefox and the keyboard wouldn't work in any of them, so it isn't shell based. One time I ran a tail of /var/log/messages and nothing showed up in it once the keyboard died and it did give me other standard messages when I waited about a half hour to new messages to be flushed to the file.
>
> Any ideas about where to start? Everything I spotted online didn't seem to relate ... and I am having a hard time figuring out what a good set of search terms for this problem is.
>

You fail to mention what type of keyboard you have.  PS2, USB, Wireless USB, Bluetooth?

I have a Wireless USB that becomes non-responsive from time to time.  Unplug/plug receiver clears the problem.


-- 
Programming today is a race between software engineers striving to build bigger and better idiot-proof programs, and the Universe trying to produce bigger and better idiots. So far, the Universe is winning. -- Rick Cook, The Wizardry Compiled