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  • Keyboard weirdness (ibus?) on Trixy XFCE4

    From Gareth Evans@3:633/10 to All on Thursday, January 29, 2026 18:20:01
    Hello,

    I am using up-to-date Trixie with XFCE4 on two machines - PC and laptop.

    PC has USB keyboard via USB KVM. Laptop has own keyboard only.

    $ cat /etc/debian_version
    13.3

    Over the last week or so, on both machines, I have noticed that a few minutes after login, newly-opened (I think GTK) applications (firefox, xfce4-terminal, libreoffice) stop accepting normal keyboard input (abcd etc) but kate and galculator for example continue to accept input normally. All apps respond to control input - eg Alt+F4.

    Already-open apps behave as normal.

    If I login, open xterm, then periodically open and close xfce4-terminal until it stops accepting input, then in xterm:

    $ sudo killall ibus-daemon

    this restores things to normality, but I can't log out (un-copyable dbus errors about ...session manager must be idle) unless I first kill xterm, which goes blank after the above command.

    Logging out and in again (instead of killall ibus-daemon) also solves the issue but only temporarily.

    As far as I can see from grepping /var/log/apt/term.log there haven't been any recent updates to ibus*

    Any ideas how to debug further would be appreciated.

    $ cat /var/log/syslog | grep -i ibus

    doesn't seem to show anything unusual afaics:

    2026-01-28T23:18:28.536337+00:00 nas dbus-broker-launch[92917]: Ignoring duplicate name 'org.freedesktop.IBus' in service file '/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.IBus.service'
    2026-01-28T23:18:28.537010+00:00 nas dbus-broker-launch[92917]: Ignoring duplicate name 'org.freedesktop.portal.IBus' in service file '/usr/share/dbus-1/services/org.freedesktop.portal.IBus.service'
    2026-01-28T23:18:43.411054+00:00 nas systemd[1863]: Created slice app-dbus\x2d:1.3\x2dorg.freedesktop.portal.IBus.slice - Slice /app/dbus-:1.3-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus.
    2026-01-28T23:18:43.412208+00:00 nas systemd[1863]: Started dbus-:1.3-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@0.service.
    2026-01-29T08:38:49.743538+00:00 nas systemd[1863]: Started dbus-:1.3-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@1.service.
    2026-01-29T10:07:14.697097+00:00 nas systemd[1811]: Created slice app-dbus\x2d:1.1\x2dorg.freedesktop.portal.IBus.slice - Slice /app/dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus.
    2026-01-29T10:07:14.698387+00:00 nas systemd[1811]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@0.service.
    2026-01-29T10:31:35.779147+00:00 nas systemd[1811]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@1.service.
    2026-01-29T10:41:49.127419+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Created slice app-dbus\x2d:1.1\x2dorg.freedesktop.portal.IBus.slice - Slice /app/dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus.
    2026-01-29T10:41:49.128786+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@0.service.
    2026-01-29T11:06:21.648386+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@1.service.
    2026-01-29T12:01:05.354492+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@2.service.
    2026-01-29T12:31:58.819972+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@3.service.
    2026-01-29T13:01:14.941288+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@4.service.
    2026-01-29T13:07:16.516551+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@5.service.
    2026-01-29T13:50:00.075309+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@6.service.
    2026-01-29T13:52:51.768284+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@7.service.
    2026-01-29T14:14:22.701878+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@8.service.
    2026-01-29T14:21:51.241171+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@9.service.
    2026-01-29T15:14:56.313503+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@10.service.
    2026-01-29T15:32:21.426211+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@11.service.
    2026-01-29T15:39:49.650427+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@12.service.
    2026-01-29T16:03:56.248093+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@13.service.
    2026-01-29T16:10:13.839758+00:00 nas systemd[1807]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@14.service.
    2026-01-29T16:29:21.413753+00:00 nas systemd[1805]: Created slice app-dbus\x2d:1.1\x2dorg.freedesktop.portal.IBus.slice - Slice /app/dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus.
    2026-01-29T16:29:21.416138+00:00 nas systemd[1805]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@0.service.
    2026-01-29T16:57:11.794472+00:00 nas systemd[1805]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@1.service.
    2026-01-29T17:01:35.591632+00:00 nas systemd[1805]: Started dbus-:1.1-org.freedesktop.portal.IBus@2.service.


    Thanks,
    Gareth

    --- PyGate Linux v1.5.6
    * Origin: Dragon's Lair, PyGate NNTP<>Fido Gate (3:633/10)