Hi,
I have a Dell Latitude 5580 laptop, and have been a happy debian unstable user
for 20 years. I have a very weird problem with its builtin keyboard which slows
down my work significantly (ctrl-c, ctrl-x, ENTER etc. do not work):
Since several months ago some keys on my keyboard do not work, in all the
applications (e.g. gnome-terminal, emacs, thundebird, firefox). When I press on
them, very often nothing happens (usually, I press on them for 10 seconds to
make appear the character), sometimes the key appears twice, and sometimes it
works flawlessly. When it works, it works for several minutes or several hours;
similarly, when it does not work, it does not for several minutes or hours or
days. I use very often suspend/resume, I also use xmodmap and awesome window
manager, but I suppose this is irrelevant.
The problematic keys are found on the last row: xcvm,. (but zbn work) and the
bottom keys (ctrl, alt, window, however space works always correctly), plus
ENTER key.
I have always thought that it is a X problem which will get fixed. Interesting,
a few days ago I noticed that on grub I have the same problem: c and ENTER did
not work. So now I wonder if it is not a hardware problem, however sometimes it
works for a long time!
I have looked at Xorg.0.log, without seeing anything wrong.
How can I track down where the problem is, and fix it?
Thank you to all for your comments. After the post, it worked ok until
yesterday. Yesterday I shut down the laptop and noticed that the
problem affected grub again, so X is not faulty. I opened the laptop,
but only the back cover; the keyboard is on the front cover, and
difficult for me to open, so I have not opened it. There was no dust,
but I blew inside. I restarted the laptop and the keys have been
working correctly since then. If the problem occurs again, I will try
an external keyboard, and lifting up the keys. I will come back to you
when it is completely fixed.
Best regards,
Eugen