Up arrow and enter not working or intermittently

When I use the up arrow in thunar(file manger), it is not moving up.

Sometimes pressing the Enter key does nothing also.??

I see the same behavior with Caja.(file manager)

Keyboard maybe?

In what operating system and/or distribution (and version)?

With what hardware exactly?

Thanks for your quick response.

Ubuntu Mate 20.04.

What specifically would you like to know about my hardware?

The hardware which is within the scope of your question

You are being vague. Please be VERY specific.

Thanks.

Narrow down your problem.
Check another graphical app, e.g. a text editor that ships with your desktop. Does it lose key strokes, too?
Can you reproduce it with a simple X-tool like xterm or xed (no GTK involved)?
Common to all graphical apps is the X-server, and then your HW matters.
X-servers are known to lose X-events when the system is overloaded. Check your system load (uptime, top, iotop).

Check from the HW side:
Do you have a second keyboard or a second PC? Then swap your keyboard.

So if the 'enter' key doesn't work what do you have to do to get out of it?

Also, have you tried using 'xev' to diagnose/detect the keystrokes?

Thanks.

I am not familiar with xev. I will do some research on it and get back.

I have a friend who is checking in his garage for a keyboard for me to use.

I used this and it shows no problem.

Good work testing your keyboard hardware.

Hmmmm.......so this problem happens with both thunar and Caja so it's unlikely to be caused by the configuration of either of those. The common culprit is the X-Windows platform.

My guess, and it is a guess, is that the X platform is remapping those keys, although if I'm right, I would expect the problem to be consistent and not intermittent.

If it was me I'd look for a .Xmodmap file in the home directory of the account being used when the problem occurs. If an .Xmodmap file exists and it's not zero length, note the owner, group owner, access rights and rename it (be professional and don't delete anything!!) to something else. Use 'touch' to create an empty .Xmodmap file and set its owner, group, access rights as per the original. Does that fix it??

(If not, delete the new .Xmodmap file and rename the original one back. No harm done.)

You might also like to research xmodmap (or any other remapping service that might be installed) and whether or not it is sitting in between your keystrokes and thunar.

As I've already said, I guess that something is intercepting your keystrokes related to the X platform and you need to find out what it is. Or let's see what other ideas other members on here might suggest. It doesn't seem directly related to hardware or to thunar as far as I can see.

@cyclist ,
all good suggestions from @hicksd8 !
Another possible culprit could be if you installed/enabled an alternate software keyboard "mapping" or something similar.

E.g. I usually install "alternate keyboard mapping" on my machines that allows me to type in alternate "phonetic languages" - for example, I install "Cyrillic phonetic" keyboard. That options allows me to switch the keyboard from "English/US" layout to "phonetic/transliterated Cyrillic" so that I could type in Russian using the same physical keyboard.

If you do something (or similar) like that it could potentially map all of your keys (including up/down arrows) to a different sequences - other than the ones used by the "native" (whatever that is) keyboard sequences,.

Not sure if it's relevant/helpful, but worth considering to see you've done anything similar.

That .xmod file is not present.

A friend will looking for an old keyboard in his garage.

My keyboard has the 6 pin Din connector.

I see keyboards with a usb connector but I prefer not using up my last usb port on the back.

I then say they have convertor for those usb connectors that goes to a 6 pin din.

Not sure how reliable those are.

I found a solution until I can another keyboard.

The lowly and underappreciated mouse.

With the mouse I can select files, scroll up, etc.

This topic was automatically closed 14 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.