After upgrade to Mint 19, keyboard randomly typing characters, esp "{}yt"

[rkt]

Hi all,

I run a fairly new Thinkpad T470, dual boot Windows 10 (which I use a few times a quarter to run a couple specialty programs) and primarily Linux Mint. I recently upgraded from 18.3 to 19, which has been great EXCEPT... since the upgrade my keyboard seems, for lack of a better word, possessed. I can be typing away happily and it suddenly does one of the following things:

* Becomes all-caps
* Starts typing {}yt or {}YT, specifically, or just {}

And it becomes very very hard to switch out of this mode. I've done a few things, like:

* disabling my Caps Lock key,
* fiddling with my key repeat settings,

just to make sure I wasn't hitting it with my little finger, but it doesn't appear to be the case. I am at a loss for why this is happening and very frustrated. I don't want to downgrade, I like the new features. I use my computer primarily for coding and writing, so this is driving me up the wall.

Any thoughts? Anyone else had similar experiences? I've been using Mint for years happily, on this computer and my last one, and I just can't figure out why it seems possessed.

Thanks

[ClixTrix]

I would try booting into the a Mint 18.3 Live USB-flash drive for a test, i.e. a way to test with software you know previously worked. If the problem repeats, I'd suspect keyboard is failing and the switch to Mint 19 is only coincidental to the problem. If not, I'd make sure you've updated all service including current 4.15 kernel in Update Manager.

I'm also making the suggestion on the basis of numerous similar reports of keyboard problems with that model. Here is one example:

https://forums.lenovo.com/t5/ThinkPad-T ... -p/4011743

Edit: I'm also suspicious of the touchpad.

[rkt]

Thanks, I'll try to get a live USB set up today or tomorrow and test it. It could be the timing -- like that person, my computer isn't especially old :-/

Kernel is 4.15.0-20-generic

One thing I'm a little suspicious of is that there's somehow some kind of weird hotkey that I'm not aware of -- I've looked through shortcuts, etc., and haven't really found anything.

[ClixTrix]

Current Kernel is the one in my sig, 4.15.0-42 generic. Lots of fixes since last spring. Pretty much first thing I do after any fresh install is all the Service Updates (including kernel).

[rkt]

Upgrading! I'll report back if that works or not. I did the ugprade to 19 just last week and had assumed at the time that the kernel update would be the most recent... but that's the thing that still periodically bites me when handling Linux updates, forgetting that I'll need to check the kernel again even if I just updated it.

[rkt]

Just reporting back that in the 24 hours or so since I upgraded the kernel, no issues. It's possible that it could still happen, but that's a decent sample of time compared to previous times between issues. Thanks so much!