Mute and volume keys suddenly "broken"

[Laurynne]

Hello,

I have a Cherry keyboard with four special keys at the bottom: a "minus", a "plus", a "mute", and a "media" key (XF86AudioLowerVolume, XF86AudioRaiseVolume, XF86AudioMute, and XF86Tools). I use the minus, plus, and mute keys a lot to control the volume.

Today, however, when I pressed the minus or plus key, the volume bar increased or decreased as if I had been holding the key down instead of releasing it right after pressing it. The graphical volume bar, which is shown each time I press one of those keys and that normally disappears again after a few seconds, did not disappear anymore. Additionally, it becomes impossible to move other windows around; they're simply stuck in their place and I have to close them all and relogin for everything to be normal again.
Pressing the opposing key (for example, pressing the minus key if I pressed the plus key before) results in the volume bar going into the other direction without stopping.

I tried the program xev to capture the key events and found that all of the four keys (the mute and media keys, too) seem to get pressed and released indefinitely, even though I only press a key once and release it again immediately.

This is an example from xev's output when I press the plus key once.

Code: Select all

KeyPress event, serial 41, synthetic NO, window 0x4600001,
    root 0x158, subw 0x0, time 16788480, (165,3), root:(166,82),
    state 0x0, keycode 123 (keysym 0x1008ff13, XF86AudioRaiseVolume), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 41, synthetic NO, window 0x4600001,
    root 0x158, subw 0x0, time 16788514, (165,3), root:(166,82),
    state 0x0, keycode 123 (keysym 0x1008ff13, XF86AudioRaiseVolume), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 41, synthetic NO, window 0x4600001,
    root 0x158, subw 0x0, time 16788514, (165,3), root:(166,82),
    state 0x0, keycode 123 (keysym 0x1008ff13, XF86AudioRaiseVolume), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 41, synthetic NO, window 0x4600001,
    root 0x158, subw 0x0, time 16788548, (165,3), root:(166,82),
    state 0x0, keycode 123 (keysym 0x1008ff13, XF86AudioRaiseVolume), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyPress event, serial 41, synthetic NO, window 0x4600001,
    root 0x158, subw 0x0, time 16788548, (165,3), root:(166,82),
    state 0x0, keycode 123 (keysym 0x1008ff13, XF86AudioRaiseVolume), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

KeyRelease event, serial 41, synthetic NO, window 0x4600001,
    root 0x158, subw 0x0, time 16788581, (165,3), root:(166,82),
    state 0x0, keycode 123 (keysym 0x1008ff13, XF86AudioRaiseVolume), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

I removed all of these keys from my keyboard shortcuts so that they can do no more harm, but I'd like to be able to use these keys again. What can I do? Is this a hardware fault?

Thank you in advance for your help.

[Laurynne]

*bump*

Do you need any further information?

[collibosher]

This is happening to me as well. I registered to pursue this matter. I also have a Cherry Linux keyboard - could this be the problem? The other thing that happens is that I can't type into text boxes. And I can bring down menus but not click on an option. When this happens I have to use CTRL-ALT-BACKSPACE to log out.

[collibosher]

I connected a second keyboard, and the media keys worked just fine with that. I opened a terminal and rooted it (sudo su) and ran lsmod. There is a separate driver for the Cherry Keyboard called hid_cherry - removing it killed the Cherry keyboard stone dead. So I suspect that it's the Cherry Keyboard driver that's the problem. A workaround might to be to plug it into the PS/2 keyboard socket via an adaptor. Can't find my one at the moment though. I've not had this problem in Linux before but no other distro I've tried used the Cherry driver.

[Laurynne]

Sorry for my late reply. My workaround now is to just not use the media keys anymore. Which isn't really a solution and also I had grown quite accustomed to using them, but oh well.
I tried your tip and ran lsmod as superuser and tried to find a driver called "hid_cherry" or something like it, but found nothing of the sort. I am rather certain that it was after installing Update Pack 6 that this happened for the first time, so the bug might be related to that update, but I have no idea where to go or who to nudge about this issue.