Greetings,
My recent installations of Debian 4.0 Etch/stable and Lenny/testing on
an "OldWorld" PowerMac, while successful and generally functional,
have been plagued by a problem with progressively creeping keyboard
repeat/delay rates. Within about 10 minutes of use after booting up,
the keyboard rate becomes so hairtrigger sensitive that the system is
effectively unusable. This problem is much worse in text-only
consoles (i.e., progresses more rapidly, both in F-key VCs and in a
single-user session before X starts) than in X, although both
environments are affected and eventually become unusable within a
short period of uptime.
When the problem first manifests in a text console, if I can manage to
eke out a 'kbdrate' command (by painstaking process of striking each
key juuust long enough to get 3 repeat characters, followed by an
even-briefer [backspace] to remove just 2 of them, lather, rinse,
repeat until the whole command is complete), this will temporarily
reset the keyboard rate values to normal, but only for another 10 min.
or so until the rates creep back towards unusability again.
Doing the above does not affect the corresponding problem in X, but I
have yet to try issuing 'kbdrate' from, say, an Xterm or Run dialog.
Also, specifying Xkb delay and repeat values in my xorg.conf does not
seem to affect the creeping-rate issue, either.
I had already sought help for this problem (and a few more from other
Debuntus) here:
http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php?t=15464
....without any real resolution, ending with the suggestion to try
asking here instead. Someone there offered the amusing suggestion of
running a script to run 'kbdrate' every few minutes but, well,
honestly... that's just too silly. :^D Not to mention mitigating the
symptom without addressing the cause!
Just a total WAG here, but might this have anything to do with using
an ADB keyboard instead of the more common PS/2 or USB? I know there
is some kind of kernel-level translation that converts ADB-generated
key signals to PC keycodes the system can use directly (cf. how the
'macintosh_old' XKB layout is for old kernels that don't have this
translation)...
Thx & best regards!
--
Tyson F Nuss
mailto:Webmaster@HTDoctor.com
http://HTDoctor.com/
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