Keyboard Problem after running EasyLIfe

[mikefarris]

I originally posted this in another forum, but have deleted and reposted here as being more appropriate

I was reading a thread in the Gamers Lounge and noticed the resource listing in Wayne's signature block, and decided to try EasyLife. It worked great and I like the changes, except for one biggie, a toggled keyboard setting. I'll explain.

I am running Fedora 8 on a Gateway MX6429 15" Laptop (AMD 64 Turion) and Gnome desktop. Installation has been relatively painless--some initial struggle with getting the wireless up but that is now resolved.
After I finished running EasyLife I rebooted and everything seemed normal until I couldn't log in to my wireless network (wouldn't accept the password). I opened Terminal and tried to login as root and couldn't (my keyboard was typing gobbledygook. After closer examination I found that somehow the function key on my keyboard was now defaulted on so that when I typed an 'M' I got a '0' instead. By holding down the Fn key I am able to type normally, but obviously this isn't a good soloution.
The problem only shows up after intial login--when accessing the user accounts the keyboard still works properly so I suspect it is a setting under Gnome. Also, though I only applied EasyLife to one user (myself) the problem shows up when I login to my wife's account also.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I know I could reformat and start over from scratch, but I hate to do that to a system that seems to be working great other than this one problem.

Thanks,
Mike

[spoilt]

hehe press the "Num lock" key on your keyboard and it should be fixed

[mikefarris]

If that works I will feel really stupid! Will try it when I get home tonight.
Though I wonder why I don't have the problem when initially logging in. I would expect if it was the Num Lock key it would apply then as well.

Thanks

[spoilt]

you're right.. hm, although i don't use gnome, click the menu: "Applications > Preferences > More preferences > Sessions". In the "Startup Programs" tab, check for numlockx, select it and remove it. NumlockX enables numlock at startup automatically in a Gnome session.

you can even: # yum erase numlockx
please let me know

[mikefarris]

Thanks, I'll try it and let you know.

[mikefarris]

#yum erase numlockx

That took care of my problem.

One thing I noticed, you had mention going through the applications menu to preferences, exactly like I would have done on my MacBook, but my Gnome Desktop doesn't have that menu structure. Is there another version that does?
I'm using the default installed from my Fedora 8 DvD.

Thanks for the help,
Mike

[spoilt]

hm, no that's the standard gnome desktop...maybe it's not under preferences... frankly i don't know ( i prefer kde ).
update: i guess it's under system>preferences>sessions
the bin file: /usr/bin/gnome-session-properties

[mikefarris]

Thanks, I'll check it out.

[Duli]

Hello:

I removed the package numlockx from the default "utils" options from esayLife, so it won't give any trouble to laptop users.

Cheers,
duli