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my keyboard is damaged, the keyboard key [é] is always pressed and it prevents me from working. On windows I found the software sharpkey to disable the [é] button but on Ubuntu I can't found no solution. On many forums they talks about Xmodmap but I can not work on the terminal as the [é] button is often PRESSED. Please could you give me a solution for that issue. Thanks

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Do you have ssh enabled? You could use xmodmap from another machine. But have you tried removing the key physically and cleaning under it? – Paul Jul 2 '14 at 0:57
up vote 16 down vote accepted

What I would try:

  1. Connect a USB keyboard in there, or get into the machine using ssh.

  2. Open a terminal, and run xev -event keyboard. It will show some stuff on screen. If you omit the arguments, you will notice that it will show some more stuff if you move your mouse, as well.

  3. Then, press the key combination you want to disable [é]. The info in the screen will change, and you will have to look for the keycode value.

  4. Run something like this, changing <value> for the value you got for the keycode in the last step:

    xmodmap -e 'keycode <value>='

    For example, if I want to disable the ~ key ( Shift + ` ), I would have to run:

    xmodmap -e 'keycode 49='

I have only tried this with more standard keys, like Caps Lock... but I guess it should work with this as well. I hope this helps!

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But this works only under Xorg. Is it possible to disable on a tty too? – paulodiovani Dec 31 '16 at 0:03
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It worked. What if I want to undo this? – Vagabond Jan 25 '17 at 14:43
    
It didn't work for me with esc key, however xmodmap -e 'keycode <value>=NoSymbol' worked – YasserKaddour Sep 27 '17 at 11:12
    
what about doing the same in terminal (/dev/vty*) w/o (or before starting) X ? – Chinggis6 Dec 17 '17 at 18:21
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You can also change the keyboard for new one. It is possible to order a keyboard for your particular laptop on the net and it comes by post envelope somewhere from China.

You can also just disconnect you keyboard and use external USB one. It is easy to open your laptop and disconnect a little cable going from the keyboard to the motherboard.

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