keyboard input error makes gnome unusable - try to find it with keystroke logger

[Bram Kuijper]

Hi all,

Since I started using ubuntu 2 years ago, I occasionally encounter 
problems with keyboard input. After striking an unknown sequence of 
keystrokes, gnome becomes unresponsive to the keyboard (mouse can still 
be used), or in other cases, it just sends continuous enters to stdin. 
No, my keys on the keyboard are not hanging, it is independent of which 
keyboard I use, and I tested about 10 keyboards, all had the same. There 
is no way out of this except rebooting gnome. It always occurs 
unexpectedly, so I haven't found out which sequence of keys is the culprit.

My guess is that in order to find out what is going on, I have to 
install a keyboard logger that stores the keystrokes. My choice was lkl.
I ran as root:
lkl -l -k /usr/share/lkl/keymaps/us_km -o /var/log/keyboardlogfile

But as soon as I start lkl it will store only the first keystrokes until 
I switch to another program and then it gives up.

Is there any way to store _all_ keystrokes I make, irrespective of the 
program I am currently working in? Or should I use another strategy to 
find this unpredictable error?

Bram