onscreen keyboard does not have escape key or any of the keys f1-f12

Hi :)

A few questions ...
1. Have you got a separate partition for /home?
2. Do you dual-boot with another version of Ubuntu?
3. Do you have an Ubuntu Cd, in which case do you know which release?

Hopefully we can avoid losing everything through a clean reinstall although it might take a little work to get your /home onto a separate partition. Of course that would be worth doing anyway to make your system more robust for the future. I have a guide that can make it much easier than it sounds :)

I think it is worth posting a bug-report about the keyboard issue as that seems fairly crucial! Although it might be fixable using

Xorg -configure

I would test that on a LiveCd session or small testing dual-boot install (preferably the b2 daily build) before trying it with your main install though!

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi Tom, 1. I do not have a separate partition for /home 2. I do not
dual-boot with another version of Ubuntu. 3. I have a cd with ubuntu 9.10.
Any help would be appreciated! These problems are on my Dell Inspiron 1525
and I have a Dell XPS 210 on which I am writing this that has Ubuntu 10.04
RC1 loaded on it, as well. I enjoy working with Ubuntu and have had the
systems on the Inspiron since Ubuntu 7.10 and have been able to fix all
problems so far on that machine, until now. This problem with the keyboard
not working and not have the top of the keyboard available in the onscreen
keyboard is perplexing, but I can follow directions very well, so any help
will be greatly appreciated. Charlie

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 2:01 AM, Tom
<email address hidden>wrote:

> Your question #108401 on mouseemu in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mouseemu/+question/108401
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Tom proposed the following answer:
> Hi :)
>
> A few questions ...
> 1. Have you got a separate partition for /home?
> 2. Do you dual-boot with another version of Ubuntu?
> 3. Do you have an Ubuntu Cd, in which case do you know which release?
>
> Hopefully we can avoid losing everything through a clean reinstall
> although it might take a little work to get your /home onto a separate
> partition. Of course that would be worth doing anyway to make your
> system more robust for the future. I have a guide that can make it much
> easier than it sounds :)
>
> I think it is worth posting a bug-report about the keyboard issue as
> that seems fairly crucial! Although it might be fixable using
>
> Xorg -configure
>
> I would test that on a LiveCd session or small testing dual-boot install
> (preferably the b2 daily build) before trying it with your main install
> though!
>
> Good luck and regards from
> Tom :)
>
> --
> If this answers your question, please go to the following page to let us
> know that it is solved:
>
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mouseemu/+question/108401/+confirm?answer_id=0
>
> If you still need help, you can reply to this email or go to the
> following page to enter your feedback:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mouseemu/+question/108401
>
> You received this question notification because you are a direct
> subscriber of the question.
>

When grub is displayed, can you use the keyboard ?

Hi :)

So you can use the 9.10 Cd as a bootable Cd to get a LiveCd session working?
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD

From that could you give us the output of

sudo fdisk -l

where "-l" is a lower-case "-L"? Also if you could use Gparted to let us know how much free-space you have in each partition then we might be able to help you use this guide
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving
to copy all your data safely onto a separate /home partition.

Then hopefully we could reinstall 9.10 on a 5-8Gb partition using the /home this would be the main, stable install on your system. Hopefully we could also create a 10-15Gb partition separately to use for testing and playing around with new systems to see how well they work on your machine.

This sort of set-up is commonly used by a lot of alpha-beta testers and also "distro-hoppers". Having 1 main, stable version & 1 in "development" is standard best-practice in linux. Hopefully we can get there without too much trouble!

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi Delance, No, the keyboard is dead! When I first turn on the power button
the lights on the back of the keyboard run across one time and then
everything is dark. Nothing works! Not the Caps lock, not the numbers,
nothing! This is what happened after April 19th when the upgrade to Ubuntu
10.04 RC1 occurred. The keyboard was working fine and I ran the Update
Manager and then restarted the machine and no keyboard functionality at all.
I would try to remove mouseemu in the terminal, if it is even on that
computer, but I don't have the top line of keys on the onscreen keyboard
available under universal access on the login screen. I can login to the
computer using that keyboard, but can't do anything without being able to
type on something. Any help would be great! Thanks, Charlie

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 9:57 AM, delance <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> Your question #108401 on mouseemu in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mouseemu/+question/108401
>
> delance posted a new comment:
> When grub is displayed, can you use the keyboard ?
>
> --
> You received this question notification because you are a direct
> subscriber of the question.
>

This looks like a bug with a new Grub version.
Linux is not yet working.

I think you have to raise a bug against Grub, to get help of a Grub's guru. Or to go back to 9.10. (sorry, but when you will access to Lenny, I'm affraid you also have WIFI issues. I had a look on the web).

With the LiveCD, can you go on the boot partition. And do "cksum usr/sbin/grub" and "ll usr/sbin/grub" ?
BE CAREFULL, not an absolute path, else you will get the Grub of LiveCD.
I need also to know which day you install 10.04 Lenny.

$ cksum usr/sbin/grub
81434616 148432 /usr/sbin/grub
$ ls -l usr/sbin/grub
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 148432 2009-10-20 11:20 usr/sbin/grub

April 19th , sorry, I should have read more carefully !!

Hey Tom, I was able to get into a live cd session by using a usb keyboard
and tapping on f12 while the laptop was booting. The live cd session does
not recognize my wireless connection so I am going to type out here the
outcome of sudo fdisk -l:
Disk /dev/sda: 120.0 GB, 120034123776 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 14593 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

   Device Boot Start End Blocks Id
System
/dev/sda1 1 9 72661
de Dell Utility
/dev/sda2 10 662 5245222+ b
W95 FAT32
/dev/sda3 663 14219 108896602+ 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 14220 14593 3004155 5
Extended
/dev/sda5 14220 14593 3004123+ 82 Linux
swap / Solaris
ubuntu@ubuntu:~$

The Gparted results are as follows:

Petition File System Label Size
     Used Unused Flags
/dev/sda1 fat16 Dellutility
70.57MiB 8.53 MiB 62.03MiB
/dev/sda2 fat32 OS 5.00
GiB 4.98 GiB 26.10 MiB
/dev/sda3 ext3 103.85
GiB 27.12 GiB 76.73 GiB boot
/dev/sda4 extended 2.86 GiB
/dev/sda5 linux-swap 2.86 GiB

I hope this helps you figure out what to do. I can plug an ethernet cable
into my router if necessary, but I have found in the past that when I do
this and unplug it, I have to reconfigure my wireless connection all over
again, but I can do that if necessary. Like I said, the only way I got the
live cd session started was by plugging in a usb keyboard and hitting f12
until the option came up to boot from the dvd drive. Once the session
started, I was able to type on the laptop's keyboard just fine. Thanks for
all your help. Charlie

On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 11:23 AM, Tom
<email address hidden>wrote:

> Your question #108401 on mouseemu in ubuntu changed:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mouseemu/+question/108401
>
> Status: Open => Answered
>
> Tom proposed the following answer:
> Hi :)
>
> So you can use the 9.10 Cd as a bootable Cd to get a LiveCd session
> working?
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/LiveCD
>
> >From that could you give us the output of
>
> sudo fdisk -l
>
> where "-l" is a lower-case "-L"? Also if you could use Gparted to let us
> know how much free-space you have in each partition then we might be able to
> help you use this guide
> https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving
> to copy all your data safely onto a separate /home partition.
>
> Then hopefully we could reinstall 9.10 on a 5-8Gb partition using the
> /home this would be the main, stable install on your system. Hopefully
> we could also create a 10-15Gb partition separately to use for testing
> and playing around with new systems to see how well they work on your
> machine.
>
> This sort of set-up is commonly used by a lot of alpha-beta testers and
> also "distro-hoppers". Having 1 main, stable version & 1 in
> "development" is standard best-practice in linux. Hopefully we can get
> there without too much trouble!
>
> Good luck and regards from
> Tom :)
>
> --
> If this answers your question, please go to the following page to let us
> know that it is solved:
>
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mouseemu/+question/108401/+confirm?answer_id=3
>
> If you still need help, you can reply to this email or go to the
> following page to enter your feedback:
> https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/mouseemu/+question/108401
>
> You received this question notification because you are a direct
> subscriber of the question.
>

Hi

When you reply into here please use the links to navigate into your thread here at Launchpad. Otherwise please delete off all the bit that we sent you from the bottom of your email to us.

I usually save a new boot order to the bios so that it looks for cd/dvd-drive first, then usb, then hard-drives. Once that is saved in the bios then booting up from LiveCd sessions is much easier. No more need for the F12 :)

Ok, i guess the easiest thing to try first is reinstalling grub2 to sda3. So in a LiveCd session (unless from inside the hard-drive install is easier?) please get to a command-line and try

sudo mount /dev/sda3 /mnt

Note there are 3 spaces separating the 4 parts of that command. If you get no error messages from that then try

sudo grub-install --root-directory=/mnt/ /dev/sda

again this has 3 spaces separating the 4 sections. The system should be able to reboot into your hard-drive installs but you might need to use Synaptic to update the grub2

Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

Hi Tom, This is the output of the command lines you gave me:
Installation finished. No error reported.
THis is the contents of the device map /mnt/ /boot/frub/device.map
Check if this is correct or not. If any of the lines is incorrect,
fix it and re-run the script 'grub-install'.

hi :)

So now it should be able to reboot into the hard-drive install. Then just update all packages to hopefully update grub2 too.

Sorry i have to sleep now but hopefully i might be able to help a bit more tomorrow
Good luck and regards from
Tom :)

I want to thank Tom and Delance for their input on my problem. I followed all your instructions Tom and ended up with a big mess after I tried to login with all kinds of problems with GRUB. I just decided to do a clean install of Ubuntu 9.10 on my laptop and replaced all the software I usually use. Now comes the fun part, replacing all my contacts and passwords. I want to thank you for taking so much of your time to help me, though. I guess this is just one of the fun pitfalls of attempting to upgrade to an alpha project and attempting to follow it through. I did learn a lot and in the end, isn't that what we are all here for, to learn to be better, to make this project better. Thanks again for working with me. Charlie

Hi

I am really sorry to hear my advice messed things up for you? Did i get it badly wrong? Is there something specific you could say didn't work?

"Pain makes man think. Thought makes man wise. Wisdom makes pain endurable.", Marlon Brando in TeaHouse of the August Moon

Personally i would rather just skip all the pain part. Really sorry about this one :(
Regards from
Tom :)

If you have to do a full installation, you can
  1-save home directory on an external disk
  2-install from scratch Ubuntu
  3-reinstall home directory from external drive
It's what I have done when I bought last year a new computer, to keep all my configuration.
All softwares save parameters in first level of /home/user directory.
I you need advice, contact me.

And it is a good habit to do backups! So start with home directory, which contains data!

Hi :)

I definitely favour putting the /home on a separate partition. This guide helps by explaining the advantages of using the "rsync" command to keep all the file permissions set right.
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/Partitioning/Home/Moving

but you can make it even easier by doing the copying just before a reinstall and then you don't need to worry about sorting fstab out :)

Regards from
Tom :)

After I ran the script grub-install, there was a black screen with all sorts of error messages and requests to run all sorts of different commands after and sh The page went on and on. I had everything backed up on an external hard drive including my home directory so reinstalling didn't take long. One question I had thought was that I had backed up all the files under 'show hidden files' in my home directory including my .themes file and when I tried to reinstall themes I liked from their, the computer would not allow it. Is there a way to use the themes I have backed up, icons, too? I just decided it was easier to reinstall ubuntu 9.10 and wait for some of the bugs to be worked out in ubuntu 10.04 after the 29th, then I will reinstall 10.04 on my laptop. I am typing on my desktop which has been running 10.04 since alpha 1 and I have been able to sort out all the little bugs so far on this computer, knock on wood. I am glad Ubuntu is so well put together, that I am able to reinstall an operating system and all the software I like to use in less then 3 hours. I thought I had my contacts for evolution backed up on Ubuntu One, but only a few were on there,so that takes a little longer. I use gmail all the time anyway, but keep evolution ready, if necessary, as gmail has gone down several times this year. Thanks for all your help. Charlie

Hi :)

I'm glad you are happy with that! Great to hear you fixed most of the problems with a reinstall but if you could manage to get a separate /home partition then reinstalls should take a lot less than 3 hours because there is less worry about back-ups and less stuff tends to go missing. I haven't quite got used to UbuntuOne yet! Fantastic to have the space tho!!

Regards from
Tom :)

Hi :)

You can always get to a command line and try

sudo nautilus

which gives you a very powerful file-browser to reset permissions with. Take care with this tho because it's easy to accidentally mess up permissions for a lot of stuff! Just reset the permissions of the themes by right-click on them - preferences - permissions & then close the file-browser fairly swiftly before you forget its the scary powerful one!
https://help.ubuntu.com/community/RootSudo

Regards from
Tom :)