"Spurious NAK on isa0060/serio0" messages

[J]

On Thu, Jul 12, 2012 at 4:07 PM, Adam Funk <a24061 at ducksburg.com> wrote:
> On 2012-07-12, NoOp wrote:
>> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/526988
>> [atkbd.c: Spurious NAK on isa0060/serio0. Some program might be trying
>> access hardware directly. ]
>
> AFAICT, the relevant bug reports for this error message are associated
> with problems such as the keyboard or touchpad not working --- that's
> why I put "AFAICT everything works normally." in my post.  I haven't
> observed any problems but I want to know whether the syslog message
> should worry me or not.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/984265

This has been going on with my Alienware M15x since I did a fresh
install of Precise.  Oneiric didn't seem to have a problem, that I
recall, and the one upstream kernel I tried also did not have issues.
AFAIK, it's only when running the Precise kernels :(

As for results I have to reboot at least once or twice a day to reset
everything.  Eventually I start getting a ton of these:


May 10 17:13:10 klaatu kernel: [266654.785332] atkbd serio2: Spurious
NAK on isa0060/serio2. Some program might be trying access hardware
directly.
May 10 17:13:10 klaatu kernel: [266654.786536] atkbd serio2: Unknown
key pressed (raw set 2, code 0x0 on isa0060/serio2).
May 10 17:13:10 klaatu kernel: [266654.786540] atkbd serio2: Use
'setkeycodes 00 <keycode>' to make it known.
May 10 17:13:11 klaatu kernel: [266654.809897] atkbd serio2: Unknown
key pressed (raw set 2, code 0x8 on isa0060/serio2).
May 10 17:13:11 klaatu kernel: [266654.809902] atkbd serio2: Use
'setkeycodes 08 <keycode>' to make it known.
May 10 17:13:11 klaatu kernel: [266654.815445] atkbd serio2: Unknown
key pressed (raw set 2, code 0x0 on isa0060/serio2).
May 10 17:13:11 klaatu kernel: [266654.815449] atkbd serio2: Use
'setkeycodes 00 <keycode>' to make it known.

(Last night, this generated so many messages while the machine was
sitting at IDLE, that it caused syslog to grow to 10GB.)

More troubling for me is that eventually, this causes random
keystrokes to start appearing on any active window.  It's never any
specific key. sometimes it's an arrow key, sometimes a letter or
number, sometimes a bunch of them at once, as though I had sat a cup
down on the keyboard and left it sitting there.

Eventually, the REAL fun begins.  All these random keypresses that
this generates start to coalesce:
Jun 20 08:54:06 klaatu kernel: [85702.678303] atkbd serio2: Use
'setkeycodes 08 <keycode>' to make it known.
Jun 20 08:54:06 klaatu kernel: [85702.679470] SysRq : Changing Loglevel
Jun 20 08:54:06 klaatu kernel: [85702.679479] Loglevel set to 0
Jun 20 08:54:06 klaatu kernel: [85702.681515] atkbd serio2: Unknown
key pressed (raw set

Know the saying that an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite
number of typewriters will eventually produce the full works of
William Shakespeare?

In my case, this eventually leads to randomly hitting on Magic SysRq
combinations.  :(