Problems with trackpad and keyboard (they seem to get stuck)

[alciregi (Alessio)]

I don’t know how to describe this issue. That is pretty annoying.

Randomly, while reading a web page with Firefox (but it happens with Chrome and with Libreoffice as well), the page scroll up to the start, like scrolling with the touchpad or using the up arrow key; trying to scroll down, it looks like there is a “force” putting the page to the up. Also, sometimes, while writing, the cursor randomly start to scroll to the left or to the right (like keeping the left/right arrow key pressed) or even to delete words (backspace). To stop this behavior I have to press a random key. But after some time it start again.

I’m pretty sure that it is not an hardware issue.

The laptop is an HP 250 G6 Notebook PC. This laptop is not mine, so I can’t be more precise. It worked without this issue since Fedora 31 until sometime on Fedora 32. I then upgraded it to Fedora 33 (fresh install), to see if the problem has gone, without any luck.

Looking at the logs, I can spot these suspect lines:

gnome-shell[1761]: Window manager warning: last_user_time (8227478) is greater than comparison timestamp (8227428). This most likely represents a buggy client sending inaccurate timestamps in messages such as _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW. Trying to work around...

gnome-shell[1761]: Window manager warning: 0x800001 appears to be one of the offending windows with a timestamp of 8227478. Working around...

gnome-shell[5659]: Window manager warning: W274 appears to be one of the offending windows with a timestamp of 62276569. Working around...

gnome-shell[1761]: libinput error: event2 - AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: client bug: event processing lagging behind by 46ms, your system is too slow
gnome-shell[1761]: libinput error: event3 - SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad: client bug: event processing lagging behind by 42ms, your system is too slow

gnome-shell[1857]: Key repeat discarded, Wayland compositor doesn't seem to be processing events fast enough!

I searched the web for such messages, and I found a lot of results containing these lines, sometimes the reports are pretty old, and affecting any distribution, but always without any valid explanation nor a solution.

Also, I don’t think that there is a load issue. The disk is an SSD. There are only 4GB of RAM, but free -h reports that at least 1GB is always available. The running applications when the issue arise are usually the web browser alone or Libreoffice. The session is Wayland (maybe I could try to use Xorg).

[rele (René Lesterhuis)]

To me it sounds like a hardware problem e.g. a bad contact from keyboard/touchpad to motherboard. Pressing a random key fixes the contact thanks to the pressure. Why do you think it is not a hardware issue? If you boot a live F31 session does the problem still exist?

[alciregi (Alessio)]

@rele

Why do you think it is not a hardware issue?

Thank you for your answer @rele.
You are right. I think that it is not hardware related because it randomly happens also when there is no keyboard activity, like reading an open document or a web page, and puff, the page start to scroll up. And pressing any key, it stop; and if it would stop only with the “up” key, I would have thought to this specific key. But well, I think that how the keyboard is connected to the motherboard, it is a bit more complicated.
Btw it seems more a keyboard issue, because even opening a PDF with the Document Viewer, you can hear the typical sound when you reach the end of the document and you keep pressed the down key (or up key if you are at the start of the document).

However it happens with Xorg as well. I will try with an F31 Live.

[alciregi (Alessio)]

@alciregi

However it happens with Xorg as well

Just to say. Without these lines in the logs.

[alciregi (Alessio)]

Mmm. Having a terminal open looking at the logs, it happens that a bunch of ^[[5~ start to appear in the terminal until I hit any key. That is like pressing “page up”. However, the laptop has a “block num” key, and I switched to “block num” excluding in that way the arrows, but the issue continues. An hardware issue definitely?

[alciregi (Alessio)]

Ok. It is definitely an hardware issue. I’ve spotted that the stuck page up key started to happen even in the GRUB menu, way before Fedora has loaded.