in an X11 environment one character (key) disappeared (not working)!

Question

Hello to the X11 keyboard gurus!

[new informations added at the end of this first post]

A few days ago I noticed that a character (a key) is not working anymore and only one key. Yesterday it was the "," (comma key). Today this comma key works back and it is the "m" key that has gone! By the way, to type in this letter "m" under X I have to copy/paste it!

Then I typed this in an xterm :

$ setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout fr

But the problem is still here.

I tried the "en" layout and the "m" character is still not here.

I had a look at different config files related to keyboard under X11 but none of them have been touched.

By the way, the command above (setxkbmap) has already been used months ago and it worked very well when I wanted to switch to a french layout from a US layout.

A propos, I have tested the keyboard under the text mode : everything works as expected. The concerned key works well in text mode. The problem occurs only under X11.

I would like to avoid reinstalling all the system.

So if someone here has a solution to get the lacking key back (or to set up a clean X11 keyboard config), it would be really great.

Thanks.

News

I used the xev command to see things concerning my keyboard problem. So below I first typed 'u' (it worked) then I typed ',' (comma) and I didn't get the expected behavior. I got a "FocusOut event".

$ xev
KeyPress event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x5400001,
    root 0x2b7, subw 0x0, time 32469122, (116,84), root:(1056,361),
    state 0x10, keycode 30 (keysym 0x75, u), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (75) "u"
    XmbLookupString gives 1 bytes: (75) "u"
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x5400001,
    root 0x2b7, subw 0x0, time 32469212, (116,84), root:(1056,361),
    state 0x10, keycode 30 (keysym 0x75, u), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 1 bytes: (75) "u"
    XFilterEvent returns: False

FocusOut event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x5400001,
    mode NotifyGrab, detail NotifyAncestor

FocusOut event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x5400001,
    mode NotifyUngrab, detail NotifyPointer

FocusIn event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x5400001,
    mode NotifyUngrab, detail NotifyAncestor

KeymapNotify event, serial 36, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
    keys:  2   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   
              0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0

I tried to use the xmodmap tool : When I press the comma key, xmodmap tells me that it is the key 58. It detects the key when it is pressed and when it is released. But I still don't get the corresponding character on my screen (terminal).

Does anybody know how to restore a working comma key?

Oh, I also tried this :

$ xmodmap -e "keycode 58 = comma question comma question"

But unfortunately it doesn't help.

By the way I'm using an Ubuntu Linux distro on a Asus laptop. This problem is quite new (a few days).

climb65 climb65 · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-11T20:00:59

Hum, err, I'm a bit perplex. This problem has gone. I did probably something that solved my problem. But This occured a few hours earlier and I don't really remember what was the good action I did which solved the problem.

Perhaps It was a misconfiguration of one shortcut in my WindowMaker config. But why some day the problem came from the "m" key and another day it came from the comma key? That's a mystery for me.

Anyway, this problem is solved.

in an X11 environment one character (key) disappeared (not working)!

1 Answers