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Bug 2988

Summary: Keyboard does not work
Product: TDE Reporter: John <johnbull1066>
Component: other (any)Assignee: Timothy Pearson <kb9vqf>
Status: NEW ---    
Severity: normal CC: albator78, bugwatch, johnbull1066, michele.calgaro
Priority: P5    
Version: R14.0.x [Trinity]   
Hardware: amd64   
OS: Linux   
Compiler Version: TDE Version String:
Application Version: Application Name:

Description John 2018-11-07 18:34:22 CST
The keyboard does not work at all.  No key shows on the screen in any program, as if the keyboard is unplugged - it is not  However, when I reboot using the gnome classic gui of Centos 7, it works fine.  It first occurred when I was typing an email in kmail.  The first sentence appeared correctly, the second did not.  and from then on the keyboard was completely dead.  I checked plugs.  I rebooted - there was a hint of an error message, but it flashed off the screen and never reappeared.  I have searched for ways to toggle the keyboard back on, but no such luck.

I tried to run kvkbd (what does this do?) and it gave an error message.  I found that there were 699 upgrade packages pending for centos 7 and TDE, so I decided to upgrade to see if bug would go away.  It did not.  kvkbd still gave error message for the version for R14.0.4! ie for the old version.  However, the software library showed that kvkbd upgraded version for R14.0.5 was now installed!

I then checked for upgrades and found that 211 packages had not been upgraded.  When I tried to upgrade these again, it gave error messages such as "Failed to process request 2-trinity-libkdcraw-common-0.1.9-14.0.5_1.el7.x86_64 requires trinity-filesystem >= 14.0.5.  A few packages failed because "requires trinity-k3b-common = 2:1.0.5-14.0.5_1.el7"

I have new hardware - bought last march, and have been running Centos7 and TDE for six months now and love it.  It has been very stable so far.  What has gone wrong.  Is this a trivial fault (ie keyboard locked off) or, is it a more serious one.  Thanks for your help.  help getting it fixed would be much appreciated.

NB The graphics and mouse work apparently perfectly.  It is just the keyboard which is dead.  although why the upgrade does not work properly is disturbing.

John
Comment 1 John 2018-11-08 14:32:48 CST
A friend who is expert in linux found that I had not initialised one of the repositories for TDE and suggested I run the following commands:

su
rpm -Uvh --force http://mirror.ppa.trinitydesktop.org/trinity/trinity/rpm/el7/trinity-r14/RPMS/noarch/trinity-repo-14.0.5-1.el7.noarch.rpm
yum update

I did this and it superficially seemed to update the remaining R14.0.4 files.  However, they are still NOT installed., and the keyboard still does not work in TDE.

Please advise me how to improve on the above commands.  Should I run something like:
yum update trinity-desktop-all???

Thanks for your help

John

PS There is a bug in the Centos 7.5 gui - it does not display the button which allows one to install different repositories!

Once I get this upgrade done, I hope the keyboard works.  But if not some help would be appreciated.  Thanks
Comment 2 John 2018-11-09 04:40:10 CST
I have managed to progress the upgrade to R14.0.5 but the keyboard still does not work.

My apologies, but yesterday I made the mistake of not selecting yes (from y/d/N) after running yum upgrade.

Having sorted that it has upgraded all the packages to R14.0.5 except one, namely:
trinity-tdm
which is something to do with X display manager and so may be the cause of the problem with the keyboard.

I don't know why it won't upgrade - I have tried several times.  However the new version is smaller:
trinity-tdm.14.0.4 is 2.6 MB
trinity-tdm.14.0.5 is 1.5 MB

I am all for software packages getting smaller and simpler, but this usually does not happen.  So is something missing from this package and is this why it won't upgrade it?

The keyboard still does not work.  If this is the cause of the problem, I would be grateful if you would help me fix it.

Thanks very much

John
Comment 3 John 2018-11-09 06:37:27 CST
trinity-tdm.14.0.4 and/or trinity.tdm.14.0.5 appears to have a bug, which is:
1. causing my keyboard to be completely dead
2. stopping the upgrade from the .04 version of this package to the .05 version

How can this be fixed please.

John
Comment 4 Michele Calgaro 2018-11-09 08:49:30 CST
Hi John,
interesting bug :-)
I am adding Francois to this bug, he is the maintainer of .rpm packages. Hopefully he can help.

A few questions:
1) is keyboard dead in tdm (login screen)?
2) have you tried using a different DM and log into a TDE session? Does the keyboard work in that case?
3) have you tried re-installing TDE anew? (I know, not the best suggestion, but you never know....)
Comment 5 John 2018-11-09 10:56:03 CST
Hi Michele

Thanks for getting back to me so promptly.

1.  I am not sure what is the tdm login screen.  I boot up under centos 7 and get a login screen.  i select the gui I want to use (gnome, KED-plasma, TDE) with the mouse and then type in the password to login.  The keyboard works fine to do this and works fine in Gnome and KDE, but not at all in TDE.  I have not found any circumstances in which it works in TDE.
2.  I don't understand what "DM" is.
3.  I have not tried reloading TDE and would prefer not to go through all of that.  i have everything set up as I want it and would like to avoid any such hassle.  What I did do was upgrade from R14.0.4 to R14.0.5 which involved upgrading more than 218 packages, which should have been enough to clear this bug, except that one package, which may be the cause of this bug, has failed to upgrade, and this could be why it persists.

Thanks for your help

John
Comment 6 Francois Andriot 2018-11-09 16:06:39 CST
Hello, there is an issue in CentOS 7 when upgrading TDM. To avoid this, you must disable selinux during upgrade. You can re-enable selinux a*fter upgrade.

E.g. type these commands as root:
 # setenforce 0
 # yum -y update trinity-tdm
 # setenforce 1

But I don't think this is related to your keyboard issue.
Comment 7 Michele Calgaro 2018-11-10 05:41:06 CST
> 1.  I am not sure what is the tdm login screen. 
TDM is the TDE Desktop Manager. Basically the login screen that you see at startup in simple terms.

> 2.  I don't understand what "DM" is.
DM = Desktop <anagar.
What I am suggesting is to fire up Gnome or KDE, choose TDE as session type and then login. Does this work? Does the keyboard work in TDE after login?

>3.  I have not tried reloading TDE and would prefer not to go through all of that. 
Sure, I understand :-)
Comment 8 John 2018-11-10 13:55:09 CST
Francois

Thankyou very much for your help.  I have done what you said and now tdm is upgraded - thanks.

But as you said it has not fixed the keyboard problem.  This occurred when I was typing an email, and the keyboard was at a strange angle and i may have hit the wrong keys and toggled the keyboard off.  Is this possible?

There is an app trinity-kbstate which is supposed to run from the TDE accessibility module (where is this?), which should show the keyboard status.  however, I have been unable to find it in any of the TDE menus.  And I cannot run it from the prompt line because I cannot type anything!

Well a strange thing happened just now.  I was trying to type into a terminal window in TDE and an "a" appeared.  But no amount of typing produced any more characters on the screen.  It is like the keyboard is below threshold and this was noise?  Or it has been toggled off and mementarily came on for one character. 

This is so frustrating, if you could help it would be appreciated.

Thanks very much
Comment 9 John 2018-11-10 20:00:18 CST
I m making some progress with this bug.  It turns out that the keys were switched into the "slow" mode, so if you hold them down for a second or so, then they register!  I found this by googling "kmail keyboard problems" since the problem started when I was typing an email, and found someone had a problem in Ubuntu, which led me to the solution.  Not immediately because there are duplicate systems settings programs in TDE:
1.  The following does not work: click on Settings, then click on Settings at the top of the panel then click on Systems Settings, then click on Accessibility and I found that the slow key option was OFF, and turning it on and off did nothing.  however, this concerns KDE not TDE!!!!
2.  What worked was to click on Settings, then the Trinity Control Centre, then Regional and Accessibility, then Accessibility and then turn off the slow keys options - which was on (how it got turned on by typing an email in kmail I don't know).

I have now got my keyboard back.

Thanks for all the support people have given me.  However, there is one more bug, which is a knock-on from this which is disturbing me, and I wonder if someone could help.

A couple of days ago I spent many hours trying to get to the bottom of this problem, trying every conceivable option to reset the keyboard.  One thing I did was to click on Settings, then Desktop Settings Wizard (Kpersonaliser).  And i started to go through this selecting various options, then at the last minute, I thought better of this and clicked on "quitWizard".  after that my desktop has never been the same.  NB the problem might have been affected by the fact that I had not yet upgraded trinity-tdm.14.0.4 to ditto14.0.5.  (See the bug with cetos which caused this - i have now done this upgrade, but the problem with booting TDE persists.)

What happens now when I log into TDE, is that things start fine: the blue screen comes up with one or two applications on it, then the processors go mad working at 100% capacity, even triggering errors, but so intensely that the mouse pointer locks up for several minutes.  Then the screen turns black and everything calms down, except that  firefox has not loaded.  Oh and the menu bar  at the top of the screen has been modified adversely.   It would be nice to get back to the blue screen etc, but what really bugs me is the minutes it takes to lock up TDE and so making booting up a very slow and painful process.

Any suggestions as to how to set TDE back to the defaults settings so this lock up does not occur?

Thanks for all your help

John
Comment 10 Michele Calgaro 2018-11-11 04:10:45 CST
Hi John,
it looks like the problem is more suitable for a discussion on the user ML than bugzilla.
Bugzilla should be used to report a known issue.
Based on your desription, it seems the keyboard issue was not actually an issue and the problem at login now is something that seems related to your system only.

Would it be ok for you to move the discussion to the mailing list and close this bug? There you would also have more people reading and possibly giving suggestion.

For the time being, have you tried logging in with a different (possibly new) account? Same issue? or all ok?
Comment 11 John 2018-11-13 11:39:46 CST
Hi Michele

Thanks for getting back to me.  There appear to be several bugs and weaknesses:
1.  There appears to be an unknown combination of keys which will switch the keyboard in KDE/TDE into the slow mode so that the keys do not work and the keyboard appears to be totally dead and unplugged.  This is a bug which is not just in my system but has been reported by Ubuntu users.

2.  When one goes to upgrade TDE in order to clear this bug, there are two additional bugs or weaknesses linked to Centos 7 and gnome:
a.  Problems with the GUI mean that one cannot select the right repositories.
b.  Also one package (trinity-tdm) will not upgrade  on centos 7 if SELinux is switched on
Both these problems could be solved by having a small section on the TDE website giving the yum instructions to upgrade from R14.0.4 to R14.0.5
Upgrading then does not clear the bug.

3.  Another flaw (bug or weakness) is that there is no message on the screen or icon indicating that the keyboard has been switched accidentally into the slow mode.  As a result it can take days to find out what has happened - in the mean time the computer is dead because one cannot type anything.  Some sort of sign that it has switched into the slow mode would be immensely helpful, or maybe the slow mode should be removed from TDE?

4.  Another bug or weakness is that there are 3 or 4 different ways of selecting the system settings (or Trinity control centre) and there are at least two different systems to be selected, one of which is for KDE but not so marked.  As a result the keyboard can be in normal mode in KDE and one does not realise that it has actually been switched to slow mode in TDE.  There is a case to be made for simplifying the number of ways that the system settings can be changed, and removing anything which is irelevant (eg why is the KDE system settings included?)  Or if KDE has to be inlcuded, there ought to be an explanation when and what it is to be used for instead of TDE.

5.  An additional bug is that the Desktop Settings Wizard seems to be have bugs so that the quitwizard button does not stop changes being made, and once those changes are made, espcially if in error, there does not seems to be anyway of removing them.  Either there ought to be warnings about this, OR this package should be removed from TDE until it is up to standard - after all if really does not do anything useful, being purely (anti-) cosmetic.

You are the boss.  If you want to migrate this to some other website I won't argue.  but it seems to me that there are genuine problems here, and i would add that I have lost a lot of time over this, and my computer system is still not completely back to normal.

I love TDE and I feel passionately about this, because I really feel it should be improved.  I hope this helps.
Comment 12 John 2018-11-29 16:28:21 CST
I would like to wind this up and say that after a few days the login-problem cleared and now it boots up quickly and normally and displays a standard TDE blue background, and all works fine, being the properly upgraded system.

Well i say fine.  I have noticed a few oddities with kmail, mainly to do with passwords, but it has now stabilised,

This bug started when I was typing an email.  i finished a sentence, and maybe the pointer got moved, anyway by the time I put it back the keyboard seemed completely dead.  As far as I can see there is no way that I selected the sequence "Settings, then the Trinity Control Centre, then Regional and Accessibility, then Accessibility and then turn on the slow keys options" and gone back to my email without noticing what had happened.

So there must be some hidden key sequence which turns off the keyboard.  The solution is some indication (eg icon) to show this has happened and what to do about it!

Or is this a bug of kmail?

Thankyou for your support

John

PS I never did connect with the users group mail network.
Comment 13 Michele Calgaro 2018-11-29 20:34:56 CST
Hi John,
thanks for the feedback. Your points at comment 11 are valid, so I have kept the bug open :-)