CTRL key does not work on guests

[gbuonfiglio]

CTRL key is not working on all my guests. They are Windows XP, CentOS and Ubuntu guests. Please note that this ticket is not about the "Host Key" that I already mapped to ALT-R (ISO_Level3_Shift really because I think Ubuntu change the default Alt_R mapping). My keyboard has only one Ctrl key and it works on host. VirtualBox is version 1.3.6 under Ubuntu 6.10. My computer is a Toshiba Satellite M105-S3064 and keyboard is US. I'm using both International English and English as keyboard layouts and none of them works.

[Michael Thayer]

You would help us with this if you can provide us with the following information.

1) In the host, in an XTerm, start the programme "xev". Then press the Control key and add the "KeyPress event" information which appears in the XTerm. It should look something like this:

KeyPress event, serial 31, synthetic NO, window 0x3a00001,
    root 0x4d, subw 0x0, time 3992149595, (-86,-489), root:(1043,331),
    state 0x0, keycode 37 (keysym 0xffe3, Control_L), same_screen YES,
    XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
    XFilterEvent returns: False

Make sure that it is the right information for the Control key (e.g. the example above contains the text "Control_L" after the keysym code).

2) Switch to a text console (outside of X Window) and run the programme "showkey -s". Press the Control key and make a note of the numbers which are shown (press it a couple of times to make sure you get the right numbers). Note that you have to wait ten seconds without pressing anything to terminate the programme.

[gbuonfiglio]

1) When capturing with "xev" I can clearly see the KeyPress event when pressing other keys but when I press Control_L the only key-related event is the KeyMapNotify bellow:

KeymapNotify event, serial 29, synthetic NO, window 0x0,
    keys:  2   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   
           0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   0   

2) "showkey -s" gives me

0x1d 0x9d

As I understood 0x1d is the keypress event and 0x9d is the keyrelease event.

[Michael Thayer]

Perhaps you could try the "xev" bit again, making sure that the mouse is in the xev window when you press the key? If what you report is correct, it sounds like there is some problem with the setup of your X server, because showkey confirms that the keyboard is working in the usual way. You might want to try xev from a live CD like Knoppix to see if you get the same result there.

[gbuonfiglio]

I just fixed it. It was a Gnome setting that was getting the ctrl key events... To fix it, under Gnome "Mouse preferences", disable "Highlight the pointer when you press Ctrl".

The ticket can be closed. :-)

Thanks! Guilherme