Most shortcuts, includting Alt+F4, stopped working after system upgrade

fsworld009 · October 9, 2023, 4:03pm

I’m running Arch Linux with KDE Plasma + Wayland

Yesterday I did a system upgrade pacman -Syu and now most of the shortcuts, including basic ones like Alt+F4 to close window, stopped working.

I also tested previously working shortcuts Meta+F8 (Desktop Grid), or Ctrl+F1, Ctrl+F2 to switch virtual desktop, they don’t work either.

I haven’t teseted all shortcuts yet so can’t say if all have stopped working or not, but I don’t think I have found anyone listed in settings works so far.

Here’s what I have checked so far:

I did encounter a lot of packging renaming as mentioned in Reddit - Dive into anything, but nobody reported the same issue there, so not sure if it’s related
For desktop grid and virtual desktop related shortcuts I’ve followed workspaces - Show desktop grid not working anymore (Ubuntu 20.04 KDE Plasma) - Ask Ubuntu and make sure compositor and desktop grid is running
qdbus shows that org.kde.kglobalaccel is already running

   ❯ qdbus  org.freedesktop.DBus /org/freedesktop/DBus \
      org.freedesktop.DBus.GetConnectionUnixProcessID org.kde.kglobalaccel
    1372
   ❯ ps aux | grep 1372
   fsworld+    1372  4.4  0.6 1678896 191212 ?      Sl   13:56   0:40 /usr/bin/kwin_wayland --wayland-fd 7 --socket wayland-0 --xwayland-fd 8 --xwayland-fd 9 --xwayland-display :1 --xwayland-xauthority /run/user/1000/xauth_iohtIS --xwayland

I’ve never changed any default shortcut, but I tried resetting some shortcuts in settings, still no luck.
I also tried reboot multiple times, no change.

KDE Version info:

Operating System: Arch Linux 
KDE Plasma Version: 5.27.8
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.110.0
Qt Version: 5.15.10
Kernel Version: 6.5.6-arch2-1 (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: Wayland
Processors: 16 × AMD Ryzen 9 7940HS w/ Radeon 780M Graphics
Memory: 27.1 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Radeon Graphics
Manufacturer: Micro Computer (HK) Tech Limited
Product Name: Venus series

Anyone knows what else I could check?

WilsonEPhillips · October 9, 2023, 4:13pm

Can you please test it in X-11? That could help the devs with troubleshooting.

fsworld009 · October 9, 2023, 4:30pm

@WilsonEPhillips thanks for reply.

This was posted a few hours ago when I originally had the issue and posted on Reddit, but was on hold by forum admins until now.

I have resolved the issue myself before this got posted, it was because of my keyboard so nothing to worry about.

=======Attaching my update posted on Reddit below==========

I later on figured out Meta+T (edit tile) works, which is weird as it should also be a global level shortkey. Then realized function keys just aren’t working on my keyboard at all, because it has switched to Fn key mode by accident, so I have to press Fn+F4 to register F4 press.

After switching back the mode on Keyboard I confirmed the shortcut keys work just fine

For anyone finding this thread in the future with similar problem:

during the research process I saw this article mentioned a bad shortkey config file may cause global shortcuts stopped working: https://pay.reddit.com/r/kde/comments/16mmacx/some_shortcuts_with_meta_key_dont_works/

I also observed that on my Steamdeck (Runs KDE Plasma on X11 in Desktop mode), it is kglobalaccel that registers org.kde.kglobalaccel on dbus instead of kwin:

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ qdbus  org.freedesktop.DBus /org/freedesktop/DBus       org.freedesktop.DBus.GetConnectionUnixProcessID org.kde.kglobalaccel
3039
(deck@steamdeck ~)$ ps aux | grep 3039
deck        3039  0.0  0.1 229928 26528 ?        Ssl  15:16   0:00 /usr/bin/kglobalaccel5
deck        7142  0.0  0.0   6564  2460 pts/1    S+   16:01   0:00 grep --color=auto 3039

(deck@steamdeck ~)$ systemctl status --user plasma-kglobalaccel.service
● plasma-kglobalaccel.service - KDE Global Shortcuts Server
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/plasma-kglobalaccel.service; static)
     Active: active (running) since Mon 2023-10-09 15:16:29 CST; 46min ago
   Main PID: 3039 (kglobalaccel5)
      Tasks: 3 (limit: 17686)
     Memory: 4.7M
        CPU: 197ms
     CGroup: /user.slice/user-1000.slice/user@1000.service/background.slice/plasma-kglobalaccel.service
             └─3039 /usr/bin/kglobalaccel5

Oct 09 15:16:29 steamdeck systemd[1116]: Starting KDE Global Shortcuts Server...
Oct 09 15:16:29 steamdeck systemd[1116]: Started KDE Global Shortcuts Server.

And I actually cannot start kglobalaccell service manually in Arch Linux

❯ systemctl --user status plasma-kglobalaccel.service
○ plasma-kglobalaccel.service - KDE Global Shortcuts Server
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/plasma-kglobalaccel.service; static)
     Active: inactive (dead)

❯ systemctl --user start plasma-kglobalaccel.service
Job for plasma-kglobalaccel.service failed because the control process exited with error code.
See "systemctl --user status plasma-kglobalaccel.service" and "journalctl --user -xeu plasma-kglobalaccel.service" for details.


❯ systemctl status --user plasma-kglobalaccel.service
× plasma-kglobalaccel.service - KDE Global Shortcuts Server
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/user/plasma-kglobalaccel.service; static)
     Active: failed (Result: exit-code) since Mon 2023-10-09 15:09:13 CST; 52min ago
   Duration: 1.929s
   Main PID: 4772 (code=exited, status=1/FAILURE)
        CPU: 19ms

Oct 09 15:09:11 fsworld009-archlinux systemd[1237]: Starting KDE Global Shortcuts Server...
Oct 09 15:09:11 fsworld009-archlinux systemd[1237]: Started KDE Global Shortcuts Server.
Oct 09 15:09:13 fsworld009-archlinux kglobalaccel5[4772]: kf.dbusaddons: Couldn't register name 'org.kde.kglobalaccel' with DBUS - another process owns it already!
Oct 09 15:09:13 fsworld009-archlinux systemd[1237]: plasma-kglobalaccel.service: Main process exited, code=exited, status=1/FAILURE
Oct 09 15:09:13 fsworld009-archlinux systemd[1237]: plasma-kglobalaccel.service: Failed with result 'exit-code'.

Steamdeck version info at the time of this writing

Operating System: SteamOS 3.4.11
KDE Plasma Version: 5.26.1
KDE Frameworks Version: 5.99.0
Qt Version: 5.15.6
Kernel Version: 5.13.0-valve37-1-neptune (64-bit)
Graphics Platform: X11
Processors: 8 × AMD Custom APU 0405
Memory: 14.5 GiB of RAM
Graphics Processor: AMD Custom GPU 0405
Manufacturer: Valve
Product Name: Jupiter
System Version: 1

But as I said these have been proved unrelated to my issue, just leaving my note here for knowledge sharing, and hope this will help people in the future.

WilsonEPhillips · October 9, 2023, 5:12pm

I’m happy to see you got it all sorted out.