[gentoo-desktop] Help troubleshooting keyboard shortcut

[gentoo-desktop] Help troubleshooting keyboard shortcut

[Chris Stankevitz]

Hi,

I use gnome on a stable system.  I set my "preferred browser" to
chromium.  I set a "keyboard shortcut" to launch my browser: Mod4+W.

90% of the time when I press Mod4+W, the browser appears.

10% of the time when I press Mod4+W, the browser does not appear.
When it doesn't work, I try again and the browser will appear,
although when it is in the "bad" state I generally have to issue
Mod4+W 3-4 times before I get the desired response.

Can someone recommend an approach to identify the culprit?  For example
- check ctrl-alt-f1 for errors
- install KDE
- try a new keyboard
- etc...

Thank you,

Chris

Re: [gentoo-desktop] Help troubleshooting keyboard shortcut

[Alex Efros]

Hi!

On Fri, Jun 01, 2012 at 07:08:27PM -0700, Chris Stankevitz wrote:
> Can someone recommend an approach to identify the culprit?

Create a script like ~/bin/loghotkey:
    #!/bin/sh
    echo pressed >> /tmp/hotkey.log
and run this script instead of browser on same hotkey. After each hot key
press check is new line appended to /tmp/hotkey.log.

If it is added, then your keyboard is ok, and it's probably browser fail
to start occasionally. In this case you can modify this script like:
    #!/bin/sh
    echo starting browser >> /tmp/hotkey.log
    /path/to/your/browser >> /tmp/hotkey.log 2>&1
    echo exiting browser  >> /tmp/hotkey.log
and check what's going on.

If it's not added, then problem can be with your keyboard. In this case
you can try using some other completely different hotkey (like ctrl+a
instead of win+b) and see is that helps. Also, you can try to use xkbevd,
xkbwatch, and other similar tools to trace keyboard events. And, finally,
try another keyboard.

-- 
			WBR, Alex.

Re: [gentoo-desktop] Help troubleshooting keyboard shortcut

[Yohan Pereira]

On Friday 01 Jun 2012 19:08:27 Chris Stankevitz wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I use gnome on a stable system.  I set my "preferred browser" to
> chromium.  I set a "keyboard shortcut" to launch my browser: Mod4+W.
> 
> 90% of the time when I press Mod4+W, the browser appears.
> 
> 10% of the time when I press Mod4+W, the browser does not appear.
> When it doesn't work, I try again and the browser will appear,
> although when it is in the "bad" state I generally have to issue
> Mod4+W 3-4 times before I get the desired response.
> 

Do you have this problem while starting chrome directly? On my system 
sometimes chrome does not exist correctly leaving behind some zombile 
processes. When this happens I cannot launch chrome again. I need to kill 
these processes to be able to start chrome.

-- 

- Yohan Pereira

The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference
between a mermaid and a seal.
                -- Mark Twain

[gentoo-desktop] Re: Help troubleshooting keyboard shortcut

[Duncan]

Yohan Pereira posted on Tue, 05 Jun 2012 13:04:43 +0530 as excerpted:

> On Friday 01 Jun 2012 19:08:27 Chris Stankevitz wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> I use gnome on a stable system.  I set my "preferred browser" to
>> chromium.  I set a "keyboard shortcut" to launch my browser: Mod4+W.
>> 
>> 90% of the time when I press Mod4+W, the browser appears.
>> 
>> 10% of the time when I press Mod4+W, the browser does not appear.
>> 
> Do you have this problem while starting chrome directly? On my system
> sometimes chrome does not exist correctly leaving behind some zombile
> processes. When this happens I cannot launch chrome again. I need to
> kill these processes to be able to start chrome.

FWIW, firefox does this occasionally too.  A "killall firefox" usually 
does the trick.

But with firefox, it at least pops up a little dialog telling you that it 
believes another instance is running.  It'd be a bit confusing without 
that.  Even if it's sometimes frustrating seeing the dialog, it's better 
than not knowing the problem, I guess.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

Re: [gentoo-desktop] Re: Help troubleshooting keyboard shortcut

[Yohan Pereira]

On Tuesday 05 Jun 2012 10:31:05 Duncan wrote:
> FWIW, firefox does this occasionally too.  A "killall firefox" usually 
> does the trick.
> 
> But with firefox, it at least pops up a little dialog telling you that it 
> believes another instance is running.  It'd be a bit confusing without 
> that.  Even if it's sometimes frustrating seeing the dialog, it's better 
> than not knowing the problem, I guess.

Yes I remember it happening with firefox, but with chrome(both Google's version 
and chromium) its way too frequent. Like the OP mentioned around 10% of the 
time. I tried with no plug ins etc no luck. But I guess running killall chrome 
a few times is a small trade off for having native file dialogs and native 
kwallet integration in kde. 
-- 

- Yohan Pereira

The difference between a Miracle and a Fact is exactly the difference
between a mermaid and a seal.
                -- Mark Twain

Re: [gentoo-desktop] Help troubleshooting keyboard shortcut

[Chris Stankevitz]

On Tue, Jun 5, 2012 at 12:34 AM, Yohan Pereira <yohan.pereira@gmail.com> wrote:
> Do you have this problem while starting chrome directly?

I need to be more diligent to test this.  When Chromium doesn't start,
I just press MOD4+W a few more times and eventually it comes up.  I
will instead stop trying and open a terminal to see what is going one.

> sometimes chrome does not exist correctly leaving behind some zombile
> processes. When this happens I cannot launch chrome again. I need to kill
> these processes to be able to start chrome.

I get the same thing.  When I want to kill them I kill processed named
chrome, chrome_sandbox, and a couple others.  As I type this in chrome
with one tab, there are 8 "chrome" processes running.  Seems a little
high.  I wonder if it is related to my "hesitant startup" issue.

Chris