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Keys pressing by themselves

Hello everyone.
Thank you to the developers for the great project.

Lately, I have run into a problem of cursor keys, mouse moving by itself. The same thing is happening with various WMs like spectrwm, dwm and even DE like xfce4. It does not happen in tty. Removed sxhkd, xdotool removed as well. Problem emerged out of nowhere, without updating for a week and same thing happens even on a fresh install.

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #1 –
In my experience that usually indicates a hardware fault, but I guess it doesn't have to be the cause. Pointer drift when you have a touchpad and trackpoint can occur sometimes as a "normal" thing, where the system gets confused say if you are using the trackpoint and accidentally touching the touchpad too. Trying to use the touchpad returns control after a few seconds. Try an external mouse / keyboard, perhaps disconnect your usual pointer device cable, whatever that entails - possibly under the keyboard on a laptop, or just swap the mouse on a desktop, that kind of thing, to rule out hw.

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #2 –
Removed my usual keyboard and used my wireless one. Still the same problem. It is a desktop, so no touchpad. Mainly it is the cursor or selector inside the terminal emulator. Say if using a terminal file manager, the selector moves 50 times a second. Inside xfce, it was able to change the workspace which has a combination of ctrl+alt+right_arrow/left_arrow.  No other alphabet or numbers are pressed though.

My guess is the nvidia card/driver for the graphics card.( Tried the nouveau driver to no avail) I will be trying the motherboard output once I have a vga to hdmi connector.

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #3 –
I think it would be unusual for the graphics card or driver to cause this, keyboard and mouse events are handled elsewhere. Some commands like this might show what kernel modules are in use:
Code: [Select]
$ hwinfo --keyboard
$ hwinfo --mouse
$ lsmod | grep kbd
$ lsmod | grep mouse
$ modinfo atkbd (or whatever modules you find to be relevant from the above)
It could still be hardware, ie the mobo, which has to interpret the inputs, but it's certainly worth checking the alternatives first.
Links that might be helpful:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Category:Keyboard_configuration
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Category:Input_devices

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #4 –
Now I remember, I removed the pc speaker module from kernel a few hours before the problem arised. It can be motherboard as it is a cheap one and 5 years old. The vga to hdmi converter should arrive in a day or two. If it still gives the error, I would be seeing to change the motherboard.

I installed debian now for testing purposes and installing hwinfo from the package manager has dependency issues. I would install artix back in a few hours.

But why doesn't the same issue arise inside the console?

Thank you for the replies.

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #5 –
It sounds more mouse related, can the problem actions arise from mouse movements, scroll wheel and button clicks? The mouse does not work in the console. There might be some BIOS menu settings related to the mouse you could try. Probably you don't have a PS2 mouse socket, but you could try a PS2 instead of USB mouse if you did, or try the mouse in another USB port if it was only USB. Sometimes desktops have several USB controllers and even more ports, so try it in all of them.

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #6 –
Quote from: ####### – on
It sounds more mouse related, can the problem actions arise from mouse movements, scroll wheel and button clicks? The mouse does not work in the console.
Aah, yes. You are a genius sir. That is why only cursor movements and clicks were getting registered. No alphabets or numbers were registering by themselves. It is an old PS/2 mouse. The problem does seem to have gone. I will test it for a day and mark the thread as solved.

Thank you for your support.


(PS: I am planning to frequent the forums often. No problem solved and exit)

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #7 –
That's good to hear, it's worth keeping track of things here as an Artix user, and we all have our diverse experiences to add to the mix and help out sometimes.

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #8 –
The problem has decreased significantly, say decreased by 10 fold. It is so bizarre. The computer is behaving like a sick person. Though the tumor has been removed, the remenants are still left in the motherboard it seems. Should replacing mobo be my next move?

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #9 –
If it was related to the PS2 mouse circuits, you might be able work around it by some BIOS setting that disabled the PS2 mouse and use only a USB one if such a setting existed, or somehow disable the PS2 mouse input:
https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/531866/how-can-i-disable-an-input-device
That would also provide some confirmation of the diagnosis, but there's no reason you couldn't continue with the input blocked by an automatically issued startup command or similar. If the problem is isolated to one section of the circuit, which is quite possible, it could work like that indefinitely, although if it was due to part of a larger  multi-function IC going bad there is a possibility other issues might appear later.

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #10 –
The problem is seen even when I connect a usb mouse. I am using computer without a mouse now temporarily. I have xdotool to bind keyboard inputs to mouse events. No problem now. Will be changing the mobo soon.

Re: Keys pressing by themselves

Reply #11 –
Changed the motherboard and been using for 2 straight days without a hitch.