Hey everyone,
Twice now my keyboard has just stopped working for no obvious reason. It was working, and then nothing. First time I was typing some chat into IRC and it stopped mid sentence. Today I was alt-tab-ing between applications and using the mouse, went to use page down or the arrow keys, and nothing.
When this happens caps lock does not respond. Fn-esc does, in that the light goes on and off (the touchpad does not disable for me even when things are working, but that will be a complication due to my choice of Linux distro, Slackware).
The first time the keyboard stopped working the power button still did work, I think.
Both times I SSH’d in from another machine and there were no obvious problems. No errors logged, and Linux still showed the keyboard hardware present. The touchpad remained working, and using that the GUI could be shut down.
A power cycle or reboot has been all that was needed, today done from an SSH session. There was no physical movement of the machine, it seems to be software/firmware rather than a lose connection inside the machine. But this is a preliminary speculation.
One commonality was that both times the laptop had its lid shut for a long period beforehand, then opened and the machine used for a while, then the keyboard flaked out. No reboot in between. I leave machines on all the time, and no sleep etc. when I close the lid.
On the other hand, the machine has had the lid shut many times otherwise, for short and long periods, and there has not been any keyboard problems.
Right now I am just asking if anything has had any strangeness themselves, or suspected anything weird about the keyboard. Have you dismissed something as a one off? Have you just blamed some junky program? Have you just gone “meh, reboot time”, as is the way for many a Windows user when something goes wonky?
Cheers