[SOLVED] very strange HOST keyboard problem

[WJCarpenter]

There are lots and lots of discussions of guest operating system keyboard problems, and there are even a few discussions of VirtualBox guests messing up the entire host keyboard. My problem is not either one of those.

I have a fair amount of experience with VirtualBox on Linux hosts, but I have never run into this before. My keyboard seems to be completely scrambled in the VirtualBox manger GUI, and only in that application. All other applications work completely normally. By scrambled, I mean no keypress gives the correct character in the application. If I type lowercase "f", I always get lowercase "h" showing up. Mouse clicks seem to behave correctly.

Let me remind you: I am NOT talking about a guest operating system, though I am confident that there will be some replies explaining to me how to solve that problem, which I don't have.

I normally would administer a machine like this remotely over VNC. After messing with the problem for a couple hours, I went to the physical console of the machine and ran X. The keyboard was completely normal in the VirtualBox manager GUI.

Here are the environment details:

• fresh install of Ubuntu 16.10 server
• install of xfce4 on top of that
• tightvncserver
• for the client side, I have tried both remmina and GVncViewer; identical symptoms with both

Since all other applications that I have tried work completely normally, and since I have used two different VNC clients, I'm inclined to believe it's not a VNC problem unless it's something really peculiar. Since things work fine at the physical console, I'm included to think it's not an xfce problem. I guess it could be something in the X driver, for the physical console versus for VNC, but, again, every other application works fine.

Any ideas?

[WJCarpenter]

For those keeping score, I have now tried

• about a dozen different VNC viewers
• purge and reinstall VirtualBox
• purge and reinstall tightvncserver

VirtualBox GUI manager continues to be the only application I've found that has this keyboard craziness.

[socratis]

there are even a few discussions of VirtualBox guests messing up the entire host keyboard

[Citation needed]

My keyboard seems to be completely scrambled in the VirtualBox manger GUI, and only in that application.

Maybe the Qt5 framework? Do you have any other Qt5 based applications?

You throw a lot of things in the mix; VNC servers/viewers, window managers, etc. Could you start simple? I.e. in front of your computer? With a couple of different window managers? It's orders of magnitude more difficult to solve a poly-parametric problem. Start by taking each of the potential factors out of the equation until you identify the culprit.

[WJCarpenter]

Thanks for your suggestion. I thought I already was being pretty specific, but I am happy to be more so if I can.

I have switched from a VNC session (bad) to being at the physical console (good).
I have tried a dozen different VNC clients (all bad).
[and, of course, I have rebooted several times (no change)]

The two things I have not swapped out are the VNC server and the Linux desktop. That's only because they are more trouble to swap out and try others, but I will likely do that soon. Do you have any ideas for other degrees of freedom that I can exercise?

(Good suggestion about Qt5. I'll see if I can figure that out.)

[WJCarpenter]

I switched from tightvncserver to vnc4server and the problem is solved.

It turns out to be an issue with Qt5. Some people think it's a Qt5 bug, but Qt5 people think it's a design decision. The gist of it is that the server has to support the XKEYBOARD extension. Here is a Debian bug report that has more details about it: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugrepo ... bug=814959

Thanks for the mention of Qt5 that put me on the right track of getting better search hits for this problem.