keyboard not responding

[Konstantin Svist]

Tim wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-08-22 at 18:53 -0700, Konstantin Svist wrote:
>   
>> I have a problem in FC6:
>> Every so often, usually while I'm using Firefox (Swiftfox 2.0.0.4 if
>> it matters), the keyboard stops responding completely. And not just
>> for firefox - it doesn't work anywhere in X (KDE 3.5.6, btw). The only
>> solution is to use the mouse (!) to log out, at which point keyboard
>> starts working again.
>>
>> Has anyone experienced anything of this sort? 
>>     
>
> I've seen the same sort of thing in prior releases, but haven't
> encountered it, again, on anything later than FC5 (yet).  You'd find, at
> some time, the keyboard didn't respond, at all.  Or that it would only
> work while you held down the shift key (which, of course, makes it
> impossible to enter lower-case commands).  I was guessing that I'd
> accidentally hit some special key combination without noticing it, and
> switched some sort of operating mode.  I never found a solution other
> than to log out and back in again, sometimes a few times.
>
> I had seen something similar, like the old CTRL-S/CTRL-Q sequence used
> to connect and disconnect some serial communications (xon/xoff).  I
> don't see them affecting the text console on this FC7 box I'm playing
> with while in a graphical mode, but it does on a text-only virtual
> console.
>
>   
Yes, this is exactly what this feels like - like hitting CTRL-S... 
Except, why would there be flow control for GUI applications? o_O

And by the way this is on a laptop - I'm usually using an external 
keyboard when this happens; I check the laptop keyboard and it doesn't 
respond, either.