keyboard failure that doesn't seem to be hardware

[Paul Allen Newell]

On 10/10/2012 05:53 PM, Joe Zeff wrote:
> On 10/10/2012 05:43 PM, Paul Allen Newell wrote:
>> 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.
>
> Try opening a terminal and running top in it.  Then, when this happens 
> you can look at the terminal and see if something's hogging the cpu.
Joe:

Thanks for prompt reply.

I ran that test earlier but saw pretty much no cpu activity so I didn't 
get the sense I was pegging out at 100%. Forgot to mention in my 
original email, sorry

The mouse and its buttons are totally responsive during this time ... 
its just the keyboard. I even tried unplugging and plugging back in.

I can ssh into the machine from another box and have no problems after 
the keyboard has locked up for the keyboard of that machine. This has 
become my "fallback" so I can try to get things stable before I restart 
the system. I just realized that I haven't tried using the logout dialog 
to kill that user and then seeing if I can come back in fresh ... next 
test when the failure happens

Paul