Bug 172462

Summary:	Alt key becomes stuck
Product:	[I don't know] kde	Reporter:	Jeremy Hooks <jeremyhooks>
Component:	general	Assignee:	Unassigned bugs mailing-list <unassigned-bugs>
Status:	RESOLVED LATER
Severity:	normal	CC:	adaptee, andresbajotierra, langec, octavian.voicu, onno, psychonaut
Priority:	NOR
Version:	4.1.0
Target Milestone:	---
Platform:	openSUSE
OS:	Linux
Latest Commit:		Version Fixed In:
Sentry Crash Report:

Description Jeremy Hooks 2008-10-09 16:11:33 UTC

Version:            (using KDE 4.1.0)
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    SuSE RPMs

I have found that after a while my Alt Key seems irrevocable stuck and only seems to be fixed by restarting X (I will try killing kwin and kded4 next time it happens) as per http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=158214 

I am using KDE 4.1.0 which seems to be the latest version released for openSUSE 11.  Actually RPM says KDE 4.1.0, KDE help says Version 4.1.1 (KDE 4.1.0 (4.1 >= 20080722)) "release 19.3".

This has happened a few times now, but I haven't yet figured out what is triggering it.  I don't know if it is related but other keys occasionally get stuck when I type, but pressing another key seems to fix it.

I tend to have KMail (Version 4.1.1 (KDE 4.1.0 (4.1 >= 20080722)) "release 19.3"), Firefox 3.0.3, Konversation 3.9.1 and Konsole (again kde4.1.1) all open 95% of the time but I haven't been able to link the problem to one app yet.

Comment 1 Dario Andres 2008-12-19 14:26:07 UTC

Have you experienced this bug again using a recent KDE version? (4.1.3 / 4.2beta1/4.2beta2 / 4.2svn) ? Thanks :)

Comment 2 Thomas Zell 2009-02-01 12:51:39 UTC

I have KDE 4.2.0 (installed from openSUSE RPMs) and I just got bitten by this bug. After killing and restarting kded4 from the console it was possible to continue to work.

Comment 3 Christoph Lange 2009-02-03 22:56:25 UTC

Confirming this for 4.2.0 as well.  Once I got rid of it by simply switching to text mode and back.

Comment 4 Christoph Lange 2009-02-12 00:57:12 UTC

(In reply to comment #3)
> Confirming this for 4.2.0 as well.  Once I got rid of it by simply switching to
> text mode and back.
Actually, sometimes it's not the Alt key that gets stuck, but almost the whole keyboard becomes unresponsive.  Interestingly, I was able to reduce this to the "stuck Alt key" problem:
1. switch to a text mode console (Ctrl+Alt+F1 still works)
2. keep Alt pressed and switch back to X using a single-key shortcut (I set up the menu key of the Windows keyboard for that)
3. voilà, Alt is stuck (can be noticed when dragging the mouse in a window, effectively moving the window, as I set up Alt as the kwin modifier key for that)
4. switch to text mode again
5. repeat (2)
6. the whole keyboard works again

Comment 5 Octavian Voicu 2009-07-19 12:00:14 UTC

I have problems with this bug or something very similar and it's really annoying.

Every once in a while, some key gets stuck, not sure which one, and no key works anymore. xinput correctly reports keyboard events, key presses and key releases (used the mouse to build the command in a terminal using copy-paste), and logging off fixes it (also, switching to a virtual terminal using Ctrl+Alt+F1 temporarily fixes the problem).

I realize this kind of bug is hard to track because it's hard to reproduce and it's probably caused by some kind of race condition. I would like to help find the cause, but once it happens it's pretty hard to work with no keyboard in order to debug it, so I want to prepare some debugging tools for that (for example, to show me which keys are pressed). Any ideas on that?

Also, which program/library acts as a middle man for the input subsystem? (where sticky keys are implemented, for example).

Thanks,
Octavian

Comment 6 Tristan Miller 2009-10-13 12:22:55 UTC

@Christoph:  The issue of the whole keyboard locking is covered by a separate report.  See Bug 171685.

Comment 7 Tristan Miller 2010-08-15 23:02:41 UTC

Since moving to KDE 4.4.x and KDE 4.5.0 I no longer encounter this bug.  Does anyone else still encounter it with a recent version of KDE?

Comment 8 Christoph Lange 2010-08-15 23:35:23 UTC

I think I haven't had this problem since 4.4.

Comment 9 Thomas Zell 2010-08-16 19:30:43 UTC

I haven't seen this in a long time.

Comment 10 Octavian Voicu 2011-09-23 05:09:11 UTC

Same here, seems it has been fixed at some point.