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I'm on Ubuntu 10.04 with GNOME 2.30.

Once every couple of days, I might be pressing something or doing something – I haven't found out what it is, though last time I was pressing the "mouse lock" button on my on-board mouse on my laptop – my keyboard simply locks down.

Some keys work, like ALT+CTRL+F1-6 and also ALT+SHIFT still changes the keyboard layout, but everything else doesn't work, no letters, no other shortcuts.

To fix it, I go to ALT+CTRL+F1 (Terminal) and run

sudo /etc/init.d/gdm restart

But I'm getting kinda tired of doing that every now and then. Any ideas if in Gnome there's a shortcut for "Kill my Keyboard" or something?

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  • Do you use USB keyboard? I have similar problem, getting 'Unable to enumerate USB device…'
    – takeshin
    Jun 22, 2010 at 16:46
  • Please don't use <br>s to break lines. They're automatically wrapped.
    – slhck
    Feb 8, 2012 at 11:24
  • I don't see that anybody has addressed the cause of the problem.
    – carbontax
    Mar 29, 2013 at 13:57

1 Answer 1

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I'm guessing that your X server is getting confused, based on the facts that a) your keyboard gets you to a working console and b) killing X (via gdm) clears the trouble.

Unfortunately, stock Lucid disables the "Kill X Server" Ctrl-Alt-Backspace sequence. Fortunately enabling it is easy System > Preferences > Keyboard > Options... > Key Squence to kill the X server.

Yes, you'll still be killing X, but it will be faster. /var/log/Xorg.log.0 may give you some hints as to the failure, or perhaps syslog or dmesg or kern.log. Happy hunting.

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  • Good stuff, msw.
    – mcandre
    Jun 21, 2010 at 17:59
  • 1
    Ctrl+Alt+Backspace is deprecated...use the Magic SysRQ Key instead: Alt+Print+K.
    – Bobby
    Aug 30, 2010 at 9:36

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