This is the latest Centos and the latest Remote Desktop. I am launching krfb (Desktop Sharing) on one machine and setting VNC conenction. I am connecting to it using Remote Desktop Client (krdc). So far, so good. But when I am typing in any of the window on a client (editor, terminal...) shift key does not work. So I cannot enter characters like !@#$%^&*.

I set "Grab All Possible Keys" in Session menu. Does not make any difference.

The behavior is reproducible on numerous servers and numerous clients. Surprisingly, I was unable to find any discussion on this issue.

Have you tried using other client applications, such as TightVNC?

Yes, I have tried TigerVNC - the same result: shift key does not work.

Which version of KDE is running on the server ends (ie. krfb)?
I suspect this is a bug in the VNC server component of KRFB (Remote Desktop).

Here is the version info

# krfb -v
=======
Qt: 4.6.2
KDE: 4.3.4 (KDE 4.3.4)
Desktop Sharing: 1.0

That is indeed quite old.

Please see https://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=182073 for this issue - updating to a more recent KDE will fix this for you.
At a minimum, the last patch release of KDE 4.5 or KDE 4.6.0 will contain the fix.

Ben, Thank a lot for your recommendation. I am quite sure it will fix the issue. Indeed, my current version of KDE is 4.3.4. But, since I am quite new to Linux, allow me to ask some questions:

1. I have installed the most recent Centos 6.3. Why does it have "old" kde?

2. Is it safe to update Centos 6.3 to this 4.6 KDE?

3. I have followed instructions of updating to KDE 4.6: http://www.unixmen.com/upgrade-to-kde-46/
This includes a) Setting kde.repo b) runing "yum groupupdate kde-desktop". But this groupupdate did not install anything, saying:

Warning: Group kde-desktop does not have any packages.
No packages in any requested group available to install or update

From what I understand, CentOS is based off Redhat's Enterprise Linux product, which is a fairly conservative distribution.
As a result, it tends to include older software.

It is usually safe to upgrade to newer versions of KDE. Configuration files will be updated to newer formats on next login.

Unfortunately i'm not too familiar with the package manager used by Redhat/CentOS/Fedora so I can't help here. You should be able to find someone with an answer on the CentOS forums however.

Hi, newbie here. Just installed Debian Wheezy x64 with Gnome 2. The vnc server under Gnome worked very well, allowing control from UltraVNC on a Win7 box.

Then I installed the full KDE package, including krfb. Now, from the same UltraVNC/Win7, the shift key does not work at all. krfb -v:
Qt: 4.8.2
kDE Development Platform: 4.8.4 (4.8.4)
Desktop Sharing: 4.8.4 (4.8.4)
This is from the Wheezy repository. Is it the latest version?

Googleing finds this thread, but I could not find any solution being spoken of.

Someone please tell me there a solution, and what it is?

KDE 4.8.4 is not the latest version - but it should be new enough to include the Shift key fix - as noted in the bug report above.
The fix is supposed to be in KDE 4.6 and later.

Does it make any difference if you use the left or right shift keys?

Thank you for the reply. Left/Right shift doesn't make any difference, neither does CAPS-LOCK. Alpha keys are always upper-case (A,B,C), and the top row (numbers plus symbols) are symbols ['(' instead of '9', ')' instead of '0']. If I press the CAPS-LOCK on the KDE machine's keyboard, then from the remote keyboard everything is reversed [alpha lower case, top row numbers].

Now I've gone back to Gnome 2 to play with; just trying to learn Linux.

Okay, just a guess - did the host machine have the Caps Lock key enabled by any chance?