# Why is caps lock so buggy?



## BlatentRipOff (Jan 25, 2019)

I have recently installed FreeBsd on one of my older machines, currently there is no GUI and I am running everything as root. My issue is this, whenever I press capslock freeBSD will stop responding to keystrokes. In order to turn off/on capslock I need to unplug and plug in my keyboard. Does anyone know why this is happening, and how I can fix it?


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## ralphbsz (Jan 25, 2019)

Strange.  Never happens to me, and I have used both traditional PS/2 and newer USB keyboards.  What type of keyboard are you using, something unusual?

If all else fails: There are programs out there to scan the codes that the keyboard generates.  A google search found a few.  Run them, and write down the actual key codes generated when you press keys with caps lock on; then compare to the existing key code files.  This would take an hour of work.


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## Beastie (Jan 26, 2019)

Same here. In the many years of using FreeBSD I've never experienced anything like this neither in console mode nor under X. And I've used all types of keyboards from DIN to PS/2 to USB. The only type I've never used is the wireless keyboard.

Have you tried another keyboard?


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## SirDice (Jan 28, 2019)

BlatentRipOff said:


> My issue is this, whenever I press capslock FreeBSD will stop responding to keystrokes. In order to turn off/on capslock I need to unplug and plug in my keyboard.





> In the Unix communities of the ex-USSR countries, Caps Lock key is traditionally used as input language switcher, convenient for usage with touch typing. Support for this is present in KDE,[1] GNOME and other desktop environments. Default Russian, Ukrainian layouts for FreeBSD specifies Caps Lock as input language switcher.


Did you switch to a Russian or Ukrainian layout? Or did you change the behavior with xmodmap(1)?


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