User defined keyboard shortcuts vanishing.

[Jedinovice]

I have standardised the household laptops on Mint 17.0 KDE edition. They all run fine with the exception of my ASUS 1015P AMD c50 netbook - which, alas, I live and die by. Yeah, it's dead slow but it's light, portable and has excellent battery life. I also got it second hand for a very short song.

Anyway, I also live and die by KDE's excellent user defined keyboard shortcuts - a great help when you are in a car charging to the next school. I barely use the launchpad now. But I keep losing the shortcuts. Every so often, at a random moment, all user defined keyboard shortcuts become inoperative. Going into system settings and re-applying does not restore them and the only way back is a system restart. Even logging back in does not work. The shortcuts are in system settings and enabled but the keyboard does not activate the specified function - as if the process that uses the shortcuts has crashed.

I have no idea what process controls keyboard shortcuts in KDE so I don't know what to look for. All my other laptops are fine.

Any clues?

Many thanks.

[Jedinovice]

So no clues then?

[vincezd]

same for me. It is so frustrating.

My pb is with what I changed in the keyboard settings. I added a keyboard layout, I redefined the use of caps lock and I set a shortcut to switch layout. All worked well for a time and all of a sudden disappeared. I still can click and the panel icon to change the layout but it has no effect. This happens with Mate and Cinnamon (didn't try with others).

I also redefined the global shortcut to maximize windows and it works.

I think we can set our keyboard layout with setxkbmap but hey, I hope there's a real fix.

[vincezd]

I modified the settings via the command line.

To change the keyboard layout (tested on MintDebian LMDE2):

- install `console-data` and `keyboard-configuration`

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sudo apt-get install console-data keyboard-configuration

- as root: edit: these commands did not work

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      dpkg-reconfigure console-data  # to set what is the keyboard
      dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration  # to set the layout
      service keyboard-setup restart

- or:

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      setxkbmap en

and to change the variant:

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      setxkbdmap fr -variant bepo

To modify a key, use `xmodmap` (the man page is good). The following example rebinds caps lock to control:

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     xmodmap -e "keycode 66 Control_L Control_L Control_L Control_L"

to know the keycode of a key, run `xev`.

I don't know how to change other keyboard shortcuts.


src: https://wiki.debian.org/fr/Keyboard

[RonC]

...
Any clues?
...

So, you reboot and all is well, again. That means everything is still intact on your HD, or SSD. As well, if none of the previous posts were helpful -- there's a chance that your problem isn't KDE-specific. In that case, your problem might get better exposure to good answers, on a different subforum.

I would try Mint's memory test on the computer that 'acts up' like this. Let it run for several cycles, or maybe even overnight. If you see anything abnormal, try unseating, then reseating, the memory chips.

After that, I would also 'wiggle' or unseat and reseat the netbook's flat cable connectors. Pay special attention to the keyboard cable. On my ASUS netbook that may be examined easily, by pushing back the pins that hold the keyboard assembly's frame in place and then lifting it up, and out. With use as a netbook, maybe something became loose and is giving you an intermittent connection.

Or, find out which package is responsible for running the shortcuts, and reinstall it. There's a choice for this in the Synaptic package manager.

Another possibility is the keyboard itself. Individual keys can fail spontaneously, without externally-visible damage. But, it's strange that a reboot would fix that.