keyboard problem on laptop.

[Nathan Kinkade]

On Tue, Mar 08, 2005 at 05:03:07PM -0800, Dennis Crowley wrote:
> Hi yall.
> 
> I've installed FreeBSD on my old Dell Insperion 7500, which I would like
> to use as a router (low power) and network analysis tool.
> 
> The problem is that the keyboard driver does not seem to be recognizing
> the shift key.  Does this sound wierd (i.e. my hardware) or reasonable
> (i.e. wierd but functional hardware with a mismatched driver).
> 
> I'm not sure how I would go about trying to correct this issue.
> 
> Any ideas where I should begin?
> 
> Dennis Crowley.

How positive are you that the key is not just broken?  Are you running X
on the machine?  If so, you can use a little stock X program called xev
to view what events X is receiving, such as keystrokes.  xev will tell
you what keycode was pressed and the symname.  Here is an example of the
output when I run xev and then press the left Shift key:

KeyPress event, serial 27, synthetic NO, window 0x1a00001,
root 0x60, subw 0x0, time 755249477, (-600,175), root:(221,475),
state 0x10, keycode 50 (keysym 0xffe1, Shift_L), same_screen YES,
XLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes: 
XFilterEvent returns: False

Perhaps this will help you to identify what, if anything, X is seeing
when you press the Shift key.

Nathan
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