mystery X lossage

[Jamie Zawinski]

Rob Mayoff wrote:
> 
> | Yet, I now find myself in a situation where the first time X starts up
> | after booting, it doesn't see the keyboard at all.
> 
> It would be incredibly disrespectful for a lowly peon such as myself to
> inquire whether such a lofty artisan as you has checked the X server
> output for suspicious messages.  Have you?

Yup.  It prints nothing at all.

> I used to see something like that, when I was running Windows NT on
> a Thinkpad 770. Sometimes it would get to the login prompt and the
> keyboard (and maybe the trackpoint too, I don't recall) would not work.
> I found that being very careful to touch neither the keyboard nor the
> trackpoint until the login prompt appeared would avoid the problem.

It seems it's not as simple as I first thought -- the X server listens
to the keyboard for a little while, *then* wedges.  (But only the first
time it's started after a boot.)  If I log in right away, after X comes
up, I'm able to -- it only loses the keyboard a minute or two later. 
The X server is otherwise functional -- repainting windows, etc.

The trackpoint still works fine -- the mouse moves, and it will
deactivate the screensaver.

If I log in from another machine and kill off every process that might
have an X connection, the keyboard doesn't come back, so the problem is
not something stupid like "some random program is grabbing the keyboard
and not letting go."  It can be wedged when the only X program running
is the X server itself.

I have no idea how to diagnose this.  What a complete pain in the ass.

-- 
Jamie Zawinski             jwz@jwz.org             http://www.jwz.org/