[gentoo-user] Strange keyboard problem

[Paul Hartman <paul.hartman+gentoo@gmail.com>]

Hi,

I have an ~amd64 laptop, running latest portage version of packages
and kernel 3.7.2. It was set up with fbsplash and quiet boot, so I
don't see any kernel/openrc messages, just the splash screen and
progress bar prior to the X login screen. It is using radeon KMS
driver.

For the past few weeks I've had a strange problem: when I type things
in Xorg, it also types them into the first text console! Imagine my
surprise when I had been doing an emerge in Xfce's terminal and
ctrl-alt-F1 and saw the same output and commands typed into the text
console.

Now I don't know if it was actually executing my typed commands twice,
or simply showing the same console output there as in X. This happens
whether I use xdm/slim/kdm or start Xorg manually after logging in as
a regular user.

It does not happen every time I reboot or every time I open X console,
but it is frequent enough. It seems that if I switch back and forth,
close and reopen terminal in Xorg, then it works normally after that.

Around the same time this started, another two strange problems started:
1) xdm/slim/kdm sometimes does not start until I press alt-F7. Gentoo
will boot to text terminal login prompt in this case.
2) quiet boot no longer works, I see kernel messages scrolling prior
to fbsplash kicking in. This started when I updated to kernel 3.7.

It seems like perhaps they could be related...

Has anyone seen/heard of this behavior before? I will try removing all
fbsplash stuff and recompiling the kernel when next I get a chance, to
see if it makes any difference. Maybe I should downgrade to a 3.6
kernel first to see if that's really related or coincidental.