Good day to all;

I have an old laptop in which I've made a clean installation of Debian Lenny and then, I've installed KDE4. After the boot, I see the new kdm, buy my keyboard is frozen and writes nothing. If I choose console login with the mouse, the keyboard works perfectly.

When you boot or shutdown the laptop, this message appears:

Code: Select all

--old kde does not end with /share/config, Might wreck havoc

Can anybody think of something I'm missing?

Thanks a lot for your time.

Did you try clicking in the name/password textbox and then writing? Some version (I forgot which) of KDM does not focus the textboxes.

YeahReally wrote:Did you try clicking in the name/password textbox and then writing? Some version (I forgot which) of KDM does not focus the textboxes.

Yes, I did, but it doesn't write.

Thanks for your help.

Try this to see if it's just a KDM problem, or if you can't type at all in KDE4. Run

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echo $(which startkde4) >> ~/.xinitrc

(and comment out any other lines with #'s), and then use 'startx' to start KDE.

GaN wrote:Good day to all;

I have an old laptop in which I've made a clean installation of Debian Lenny and then, I've installed KDE4. After the boot, I see the new kdm, buy my keyboard is frozen and writes nothing. If I choose console login with the mouse, the keyboard works perfectly.

When you boot or shutdown the laptop, this message appears:

Code: Select all

--old kde does not end with /share/config, Might wreck havoc

Can anybody think of something I'm missing?

Thanks a lot for your time.

Make sure you have xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.0.99.3-1 if using xserver-xorg-core 1.5.3.
This happened to me on the 12th.
xserver-xorg-core went to 1.5.3 from 1.5.2 and I had no mouse or keyboard. Later that day evdev came out and I was fine after upgrading.
A friend had the same issue as well.

Cader wrote:

GaN wrote:Good day to all;

I have an old laptop in which I've made a clean installation of Debian Lenny and then, I've installed KDE4. After the boot, I see the new kdm, buy my keyboard is frozen and writes nothing. If I choose console login with the mouse, the keyboard works perfectly.

When you boot or shutdown the laptop, this message appears:

Code: Select all

--old kde does not end with /share/config, Might wreck havoc

Can anybody think of something I'm missing?

Thanks a lot for your time.

Make sure you have xserver-xorg-input-evdev 1:2.0.99.3-1 if using xserver-xorg-core 1.5.3.
This happened to me on the 12th.
xserver-xorg-core went to 1.5.3 from 1.5.2 and I had no mouse or keyboard. Later that day evdev came out and I was fine after upgrading.
A friend had the same issue as well.

I've installed xserver-xorg-input-evdev from the experimental branch and it has worked. My keyboard is useful again.

Thank you very much for your help.

I had this problem on my daughters Desktop, running Slackware 13.
Problem occured 19th November 2009.
I have 2 identical Desktops HW + SW both recieving updates at the same time.
Only one account on one desktop was effected!

She switched on the PC, was able to use the keyborad to login but once logged in, there was no keyboard function in KDE, in Firefox, in terminals opened from KDE etc. PC boots to runlevel 4. The mouse was uneffected and worked fine.

At this point she asked for my assistance. I logged her out and logged in as my user. My user was uneffected. I could probably have ssh'd to machine or alt+Fnkey to new console.
I compared files in the 2 home directories. + running processes. There were no additional processes running under her user or anything particularly obvious, however she did have an additional hidden directory called .freddy which I have no explanation for, I deleted it along with .kde .mozilla and anything that would just get replaced from the skeleton when she logged on next.
I logged out, She logged back in and changed her desktop preferences back to the way she likes them and everything was fine. I spent about 15 minutes looking into this, that's all. I would have liked to have spent a lot longer working out what happened.

This is most likely some little glitch with KDE4 but I dont rule out some kind of primative linux malware.

i.e Start's a process to muck up your KDE setting when you log in, trapping and possibly redirecting keyboard entry. Process would not be running once its messed your KDE settings to redirect keyboard and you are logged in.
I dont understand enough about KDE to know how you would do that or weather its possible.
If above is possible, its also possible to read trapped key strokes, if you reboot and log in again. search for sudo attempts. Im guessing.

This is unlikely to be malware of any form. It is more likely that the Keyboard settings in System Settings > Regional & Language > Keyboard Layout were somehow activated or messed up.

I'm facing an analogue problem.
I have a computer with OpenSuSE 11.3 and KDE 4.4.4 "release 3" installed.
Few days ago, while chatting on Omegle.com, my keyboard suddenly has stopped working.
I have logged out from KDE and the keyboard started again to work.
After a new login in KDE, the keyboard again stopped working.
I then created a new account (using root account) and the keyboard in this new account works fine.
I tried to change the keyboard setting as suggested in the answer #p138275, but nothing as changed.
If I use a shell different from KDE and the original account, the system works fine.
Recently I discovered that using KDE and the original account, keeping a key pressed, after an about two seconds, the corresponding character appears on the video...
I have not found any way to correct this problem.
Is there anybody that can help me?

Open System Settings, locate the accessibility settings and disable sticky keys. Then enter the keyboard settings and make sure the repeat time is correct.

Thanks bcooksley,
The keyboard now works again regularly.