[NTLUG:Discuss] Keyboard beeps with SuSE 9.1

[Kevin Brannen]

Steve Baker wrote:

> David IS Mandala wrote:
>
>> First you'll need to set the chvt command suid for root after the test
>> you will want to remove the suid bit.
>
>
> OK, so after several days without misbehaving, I got another keyboard
> lock-up today - same symptoms. Suddenly, right in the middle of typing
> some plain vanilla text, the keyboard starts to beep instead of producing
> characters - the mouse still works and programs are working OK providing
> I can interact with them using the mouse or a remote login.
>
> Doing a remote login and (as root) running:
>
>   % chvt 2
>   (switches to virtual console 2)
>   % chvt 7
>   (goes back into X)
>
> ...seems to fix the problem.  After doing that, the keyboard behaves
> itself perfectly - even allowing me to continue to edit the document
> I was working on as if nothing had happened.
>
> So it looks like I have a work-around that's a lot better than restarting
> X - but it's still a mystery as to why upgrading from SuSE 8.0 to 9.1
> and swapping out my nVidia graphics drivers for a newer release has
> caused this.


This has been an interesting thread to follow, especially since I'm not 
experiencing it. :-)

That is truly bizarre behavior!  Since it happens with different video 
card drivers, that makes it sound like it's actually in the keyboard 
routines.  So the bug is probably somewhere down in libX11.*.  It would 
be fun to know if you have this same problem with 9.2, since that's the 
new Xorg code instead of the XFree86 code.  Not that I believe the Xorg 
code is really any better at this point in time, but it's differentness 
might be useful to you.  Any chance of upgrading soon?

Part of me wants to blame this on the framebuffer code and advise you 
not to use it since that code seems to cause random grief, but I can't 
see how it would be affecting the keyboard.  Still, if you got time to 
try it, reboot and put "vga=normal" in your boot line and see if the 
problem comes back.

Kevin