Some keys no longer working in xterm or konsole

English Applications
1

Just had a weird problem in konsole at the command line. Some of my
keys are not recognized as if they are not being pushed. They work fine
in other applications and work fine if I push the Shift key with it and
capitalize the letter. Some of the keys are the c, g, r, w, 3, 8,and 9.
C, G, R, W, #, *, and ( all work so I do not believe it is hardware as
I am using this computer to type this message. It is just at the
command line. I don’t know what I did to make this happen or how to fix it.

I am using openSUSE 11.3 with the KDE 4.4.4 release 3.

I tried reinstalling xterm and konsole from yast but it did not fix it.

I hope some kind soul will help me fix this.

Thank you,

Eric

2

have you made any changes to any of these?

~/.bashrc
/etc/bash.bashrc
/etc/bash.bashrc.local

–
DD Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!

3

On 08/08/2011 03:23 AM, DenverD wrote:
> have you made any changes to any of these?
>
> ~/.bashrc
> /etc/bash.bashrc
> /etc/bash.bashrc.local
>

I did not make any changes to the fist two and I do not have the last
file.

What is also weird is that I can not copy and then paste any of those
key strokes into konsole after typing them in kwrite. Those key strokes
are just skipped.

I just tried copying “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz134567890-=” into
konsole and when I paste it I get:

“adefhijklmnopqstuvxyz145670-=”

I don’t know where my letters are going. This is making no sense to me
at all.

Eric

4

On 08/09/2011 06:45 AM, Eric wrote:
> I just tried copying “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz134567890-=” into
> konsole and when I paste it I get:
>
> “adefhijklmnopqstuvxyz145670-=”

well Erik, i just did that here and i can’t duplicate it…

there are SO many things that might cause it i wouldn’t know where to
look for the fix for your machine…but, i guess if you use YaST to
add a new test user, then log out and back in as that test user i
think the problem will disappear…but, i’m just guessing…and, if
my guess is right then something in your /home is out of whack…

what is out of whack where i have no idea…but, problems in /home
often come up when folks ‘upgrade’ incorrectly or “distro hop” and
keep their /home (because both of those things leave ‘stuff’ laying
around in corners, in config files and etc and the ‘stuff’ just causes
problems)…

if the new /home works you have the choice of what to do (migrate data
to the new and abandon the old, or try to find the needle in the
haystack in the old home which is the problem–that can be done with a
lot of patience and using a took like diff to compare the config files
in old vs new)…

you might find exactly the path to happiness you see here:
http://tinyurl.com/3vh9jqc (linux generic)
http://tinyurl.com/3k5g83u (SUSE specific)

but hey, there is LOTS of reading there and i’d suggest you do a broad
survey of the articles before you make any changes…because you are
dealing with a symptom of several different potential problems…and,
the ‘solution’ that solved one symptom may not solve your symptom,
because you have a different underlying problem.

good luck, and let us know how you get on…

if, you discover a bug, in your hunt be sure and let us know…

and last, before you make any changes to your system, read my sig’s
caveat, please…

–
DD Caveat
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!

5

Perhaps the characters are there but not visible because e.g. the character encoding is messed up.

Take a look at
~/.kde4/share/config/konsolerc and
~/.kde4/share/apps/konsole/Shell.profile
with Kate or Kwrite. If either has any “junk” characters, or does not read with sensible settings, delete it before starting Konsole. They will be re-created with default values.

6

On 08/08/2011 11:47 PM, DenverD wrote:
> On 08/09/2011 06:45 AM, Eric wrote:
>> I just tried copying “abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz134567890-=” into
>> konsole and when I paste it I get:
>>
>> “adefhijklmnopqstuvxyz145670-=”
>
> well Erik, i just did that here and i can’t duplicate it…
>
> there are SO many things that might cause it i wouldn’t know where to
> look for the fix for your machine…but, i guess if you use YaST to
> add a new test user, then log out and back in as that test user i
> think the problem will disappear…but, i’m just guessing…and, if
> my guess is right then something in your /home is out of whack…
>
> what is out of whack where i have no idea…but, problems in /home
> often come up when folks ‘upgrade’ incorrectly or “distro hop” and
> keep their /home (because both of those things leave ‘stuff’ laying
> around in corners, in config files and etc and the ‘stuff’ just causes
> problems)…
>
> if the new /home works you have the choice of what to do (migrate data
> to the new and abandon the old, or try to find the needle in the
> haystack in the old home which is the problem–that can be done with a
> lot of patience and using a took like diff to compare the config files
> in old vs new)…
>
> you might find exactly the path to happiness you see here:
> http://tinyurl.com/3vh9jqc (linux generic)
> http://tinyurl.com/3k5g83u (SUSE specific)
>
> but hey, there is LOTS of reading there and i’d suggest you do a broad
> survey of the articles before you make any changes…because you are
> dealing with a symptom of several different potential problems…and,
> the ‘solution’ that solved one symptom may not solve your symptom,
> because you have a different underlying problem.
>
> good luck, and let us know how you get on…
>
> if, you discover a bug, in your hunt be sure and let us know…
>
> and last, before you make any changes to your system, read my sig’s
> caveat, please…
>

Thank you for your advice. I tried with a new user and the problem is
gone. I am still baffled what I did wrong with my main user and how
this happened. I am traveling with this computer and do not have
internet available all the time so I apologize for the late replies. At
first I thought my keyboard was broken because of moving it around so
much but further investigation and your suggestion show it is something
screwy in my home settings. I will probably keep this user for a while
to keep testing what got screwed up until I finally give up or upgrade
to 11.4.

Again,

Thank you for your help.

Eric

7

On 08/09/2011 01:16 AM, eng-int wrote:
>
> Perhaps the characters are there but not visible because e.g. the
> character encoding is messed up.
>
> Take a look at
> ~/.kde4/share/config/konsolerc and
> ~/.kde4/share/apps/konsole/Shell.profile
> with Kate or Kwrite. If either has any “junk” characters, or does not
> read with sensible settings, delete it before starting Konsole. They
> will be re-created with default values.
>
>

Thank you for your help but this did not work for me. I checked both
files and they looked fine except for the “state=” statement in
konsolerc which looked a little funny but it turned out it was the same
as for a new user. After deleting the files and logging out and back in
the problem remained the same.

Eric

8

On 08/11/2011 01:07 AM, eric wrote:
> Thank you for your advice. I tried with a new user and the problem is
> gone. I am still baffled what I did wrong with my main user and how this
> happened.

i believe (but can’t prove) that strange things (like you are seeing)
can be introduced by any of these things:

-distro hopping and retaining /home

-installing software from openSUSE repos factory, unstable, playground
or tumbleweed

-using multiple desktop environments with the same user/home

> I am traveling with this computer and do not have internet
> available all the time so I apologize for the late replies.

no problem (to me) i don’t notice a thread until there is a reply…so,
no reply is no problem…

> At first I
> thought my keyboard was broken because of moving it around so much but
> further investigation and your suggestion show it is something screwy in
> my home settings.

tedious but using diff to compare the hidden config files in the old vs
test homes should (eventually) lead you to where the problem lies…

> I will probably keep this user for a while to keep
> testing what got screwed up until I finally give up or upgrade to 11.4.

that will work, but when you ‘upgrade’ to 11.4 it will then be necessary
for you to NOT retain the messed up /home…save the data, but not the
configs…

> Thank you for your help.

very welcome…

–
DD
Caveat-Hardware-Software
openSUSE®, the “German Engineered Automobiles” of operating systems!

9

On 08/10/2011 09:54 PM, DenverD wrote:
> On 08/11/2011 01:07 AM, eric wrote:

>> I will probably keep this user for a while to keep
>> testing what got screwed up until I finally give up or upgrade to 11.4.
>
> that will work, but when you ‘upgrade’ to 11.4 it will then be necessary
> for you to NOT retain the messed up /home…save the data, but not the
> configs…
>
>
>> Thank you for your help.
>
> very welcome…
>

Yes, when I upgrade it is actually a clean install of the new version
on a different partition. My home will be new without any old settings
and I will just migrate my documents over to the new user .

Eric