Ubuntu

cannot press F2 to change a file's name (possible bug?)

Asked by Shannon Fang

Hi there,

I am using Ubuntu 7.10 with emerald enabled. I have strange problem related to the keyboard, steps to reproduce the problem are:

1) select any file on the desktop.

2) press F2 to change its file name.

3) some time I cannot type-in new file name, because it does not respond to keyboard entry. I have to press ESC to exit editing mode, then I press F2 again it still enters name editing mode. In another word, the "keyboard lost responsiveness" problem only happens while name-editing mode is in action.

4) NOTE that this problem happens "sometime", not "always". Later I find out that if I try to use SHIFT key while editing the name (for example to enter a capital letter or to SHIFT-END select the entire name), this problem is 100% reproduceable!

5) While this happens, I can only rename the file in terminal, or I need to killall -HUP nautilus to make it responsible to keyboard again. (note that keyboard is generally responsive, problem only occur while change file name).

6) The keyboard loss responsiveness problem sometime happens in terminal or in gaim, I don't know if they are related or not.

Please help me test the above case, or shall I report a bug? If it is a bug, which project? (as I said the problem could appear in many applications).

Thank you!

Sincerely,
Shannon

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Solved by:
Sami Haahtinen
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Sami Haahtinen (ressu) said : 		#1

Does the same thing occur if you right click the file and select rename from the menu?

First thing that comes in to mind is that something else binds to F2 too and it's waiting for input for that.

Revision history for this message
Shannon Fang (xrfang) said : 		#2

Hi Sami,

This is not the case.

1) I didn't see anything popup or appear while I press F2.
2) I tried as you suggested, right click/rename has the same effect
3) Just now, it was ok *until* I pressed shift trying to enter a capital letter, then it does not listen to keyboard any more.

Thanks!

Revision history for this message
Shannon Fang (xrfang) said : 		#3

I just tried with another Gutsy (also have emerald installed) and an Edgy, both of them does NOT have this problem...

Is it possible that it may be caused by my keyboard driver? The 2 OK machine is desktop PC, and the problematic one is my Samsung X05 laptop.

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Sami Haahtinen (ressu) said : 		#4

Since you can't reproduce the problem on a different computer, it might be best to try and reproduce it on the same computer with a different account. Go to System -> Administration -> Users and Groups, select add user and create a temporary username. Try logging in with that username to see if it happens there too.

If it happens there too then we have a bug in our hands and we should start narrowing down the origin of the bug. If it doesn't happen on the other account, i would guess that some cache data is corrupted and that is causing the problems.

Revision history for this message
Shannon Fang (xrfang) said : 		#5

Hi Sami,

Thank you for the suggestion, I have tested with a new account, it STILL has this problem "out-of-the-box" (i.e., a brand-new user account).

Please advice... thank you very much!

Revision history for this message
Best Sami Haahtinen (ressu) said : 		#6

On Sat, 2007-11-17 at 09:36 +0000, Shannon Fang wrote:
> Thank you for the suggestion, I have tested with a new account, it STILL
> has this problem "out-of-the-box" (i.e., a brand-new user account).

After a bit of digging, i found a bug that might be the one that is
affecting you:

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+bug/34282

There appear to be various ways of going around that bug, easiest could
be this:

im-switch -s scim_xim -z default

Lets hope it's this bug, i'm running out of ideas.

- s

--
Sami Haahtinen <email address hidden>

Revision history for this message
Shannon Fang (xrfang) said : 		#7

Hi Sami,

Your estimation is correct. It has something to do with scim... I switched the UI language to English and this problem is gone!

However, I also tried to run

im-switch -s scim_xim -z default

while my UI language is still Chinese, that command reports:

Error: no configuration file "scim_xim" exists.
Error: No action taken.

I will consult the Ubuntu Chinese forum to see if there are anybody with the same problem, and update this question.

For now could you please teach me how you find this bug and determine it is related to my problem? ;-) Before I post this question, I did search on launchpad and nothing seems related, so I post this question ...

Thank you!

Revision history for this message
Sami Haahtinen (ressu) said : 		#8

On Sat, 2007-11-17 at 13:32 +0000, Shannon Fang wrote:
> Your estimation is correct. It has something to do with scim... I
> switched the UI language to English and this problem is gone!

That's good to hear, I was pretty much out of ideas.

> For now could you please teach me how you find this bug and determine it
> is related to my problem? ;-) Before I post this question, I did search
> on launchpad and nothing seems related, so I post this question ...

It was mostly just plain luck. I came across a link to ubuntuforums when
searching for a solution. The post itself described similar problems and
mentioned the bug.

Usually it's really hard to find a decent hit for such a obscure
problem. If we could have narrowed it down to some application it would
have been a lot easier to find a proper bug or some hit in the internet.
In this case it was just luck =)

- S

--
Sami Haahtinen <email address hidden>

Revision history for this message
Shannon Fang (xrfang) said : 		#9

I found the same question being asked on forum.ubuntu.org.cn:

http://forum.ubuntu.org.cn/viewtopic.php?t=88151

Revision history for this message
Shannon Fang (xrfang) said : 		#10

Thanks Sami Haahtinen, that solved my question.