What in the World happened to the %#$&! keyboard? (Ubuntu 10.10)

[Matt Graham]

From: "kitepilot at kitepilot.com" <kitepilot at kitepilot.com>
>> Did the keyboard work for a bit then suddenly stop working?
> I installed Ubuntu 10.10 some week ago. Everything worked as
> advertised.  Then I don't what happened, his recollection is
> far from clever (he is 96). 
> 
> All I know is that now the GUI ignores the keyboard.
> PS: And yes, the hardware is OK...   :) 

If X ignores the keyboard, while GRUB and the console don't, that almost
certainly means an X problem, either a config problem or a missing X keyboard
module.  Can you ssh to the machine?  If you can, take a look at
/var/log/Xorg.0.log and grep the last few hundred lines by eyeball for
anything relating to the keyboard.  It may be as simple as doing the Ubuntu
equivalent of "emerge xf86-input-keyboard" (remove old keyboard module,
install new keyboard module) and restarting X.

If you can't ssh to it, things get a bit more difficult.

-- 
Matt G / Dances With Crows
The Crow202 Blog:  http://crow202.org/wordpress/
There is no Darkness in Eternity/But only Light too dim for us to see