I recently started using Awesome (the X windows manager) in my Ubuntu. It is awesome! But some times (once a day max) it kinda crashes — or at least stop accepting shortcuts input. I get stuck on the workspace (tag, I belive they call it) I am. Clicking on the other ones, or using Mod4+numbers won't work. It simply stops listening. If I type mod4+j, it types j
, as if only the awesome's keylistener had aborted or something. But everything runs fine in the current workspace, the awesome UI still render on the top, and even the clock keeps ticking!
The only thing left to do is to manually shut down the machine, as I can't even turn it off properly… I have no idea what is going on. It might as well be a shortcut to disable all shortcuts or something that I eventually accidentally type, or a weird semi-crash, but I've searched Google a lot for references and found nothing. Does anyone have a clue on what happens and how to fix it (or better yet, prevent from happening)?
Best Answer
Going by your description, the window manager hasn't crashed: it's still responding to window-related events, the problem is that it is no longer detecting keyboard events.
What is probably happening is that your keyboard configuration has changed in a way that awesome doesn't recognize. Check that
ignore_modifiers
is set correctly: if it's missingLock
or your NumLock modifier, then your keyboard and mouse shortcuts won't work while Caps Lock / Num Lock are on. Also, check that the key that you think sendsMod4
is still sending that modifier.To check what your keyboard is sending, run the command
xev
in a terminal and press keys in the xev window. If you press A then you should see something likeIf you see a
state
that's different from0x0
then some modifier is on, for example0x2
indicates that Caps Lock is on. When you press theMod4
key, the state should change to0x40
.