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Keyboard occasionally endlessly repeating keys

Must-fix Jörn Engel 3 participants 6 messages Jun 20, 2003 – Jun 25, 2003

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Hi!

After having upgraded my notebook to 2.5.72, I noticed a rare problem, that occurs about twice a day, maybe more. After pressing a key, it gets repeated endlessly until the next key is pressed. When typing fast, it is quite possible to cover up a couple of these, as the repeats appear to happen at the set keyboard rates. Problem never occured with any 2.4 kernel.

I remember having read about this problem on the list before, but didn't search my archive yet. Also, I consider this to be a show stopper, as the bug is already nasty when hitting 'q' inside mutt once and might have worse effects with other programs. YMMV.

Jörn

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#1 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines · Jörn Engel

After having upgraded my notebook to 2.5.72, I noticed a rare problem, that occurs about twice a day, maybe more. After pressing a key, it gets repeated endlessly until the next key is pressed. When typing fast, it is quite possible to cover up a couple of these, as the repeats appear to happen at the set keyboard rates. Problem never occured with any 2.4 kernel.

I remember having read about this problem on the list before, but didn't search my archive yet. Also, I consider this to be a show stopper, as the bug is already nasty when hitting 'q' inside mutt once and might have worse effects with other programs. YMMV.

Yes, I know about the problem. I wasn't able to pin it down yet, though. It looks like the keyboard might just 'forget' to send a key release. This is not a problem on 2.4, since 2.4 uses the keyboard hardware autorepeat. 2.5 does autorepeat in software and if the keyboard doesn't send the release, well ...

But it might be a software problem, too. If you want to help, you can run with I8042_DEBUG_IO enabled all the time and send me the log from around the point in time when it happened.

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Vojtech Pavlik
SuSE Labs, SuSE CR
#2 lore raw
In reply to Jörn Engel
Quoted 6 lines · Jörn Engel

After having upgraded my notebook to 2.5.72, I noticed a rare problem, that occurs about twice a day, maybe more. After pressing a key, it gets repeated endlessly until the next key is pressed. When typing fast, it is quite possible to cover up a couple of these, as the repeats appear to happen at the set keyboard rates. Problem never occured with any 2.4 kernel.

Assuming you're still seeing this, does booting w/ "clock=pit" resolve the problem? If so could you send me more info about the system? (is speed step enabled, etc?)

thanks
-john

#3 lore raw
Quoted 11 lines · john stultz
Quoted 6 lines · Jörn Engel

After having upgraded my notebook to 2.5.72, I noticed a rare problem, that occurs about twice a day, maybe more. After pressing a key, it gets repeated endlessly until the next key is pressed. When typing fast, it is quite possible to cover up a couple of these, as the repeats appear to happen at the set keyboard rates. Problem never occured with any 2.4 kernel.

Assuming you're still seeing this, does booting w/ "clock=pit" resolve the problem? If so could you send me more info about the system? (is speed step enabled, etc?)

Problem appears to be from hardware, Vojtech Pavlik helped me a bit to track it down. Hardware occasionally doesn't send the key release signal after a key pressed signel.

System is IBM Thinkpad R30, CPU permanently running on low speed (700MHz), no speed step (unsupported chipset).

Should I still test w/ clock=pit?

Jörn

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#4 lore raw
Quoted 5 lines · Jörn Engel
Quoted 3 lines · john stultz

Assuming you're still seeing this, does booting w/ "clock=pit" resolve the problem? If so could you send me more info about the system? (is speed step enabled, etc?)

Quoted 8 lines

Problem appears to be from hardware, Vojtech Pavlik helped me a bit to track it down. Hardware occasionally doesn't send the key release signal after a key pressed signel.

System is IBM Thinkpad R30, CPU permanently running on low speed (700MHz), no speed step (unsupported chipset).

Should I still test w/ clock=pit?

Not if its resolved for you. I was just seeing a number of time related keyboard problems on laptops (kbd repeat rates too fast)and wanted to see if you were affected as well.

thanks
-john

#5 lore raw
Quoted 7 lines · john stultz
Quoted 2 lines · Jörn Engel

Should I still test w/ clock=pit?

Not if its resolved for you. I was just seeing a number of time related keyboard problems on laptops (kbd repeat rates too fast)and wanted to see if you were affected as well.

Not resolved, but understood. The hardware is broken, no doubt about it. 2.5 should be able to deal with the broken hardware just as good as 2.4 was, but Vojtech appears to be working on it. Until then I have to live with my problem. :(

Jörn

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