Ubuntu 10.0.4, VMware and No Keyboard
Tonight I wanted to try out the recently released Ubuntu 10.0.4 so I downloaded the ISO and gave it a shot with VMware Player on my home machine. While the install itself went well, once I was at a logon screen I couldn’t use the keyboard. Mouse worked, but to logon I had to resort to the “accessibility” on-screen keyboard. Once in, the regular keyboard was fine. Weird…
Thinking that I had a bad image or install, I re-downloaded Ubuntu and tried again with VMware Workstation 7 on my laptop. Same deal, no keyboard. Like any good “technologist” I realized it was time to do some web searching.
The second link I clicked brought me to the Reformed Musings blog and his “Keyboard issues with Ubuntu Lucid 10.04 and VMWare Workstation 7.0” article. Bam! Problem solved. He has the necessary fix listed out there that he found in a forum post. Presumably, future versions of Player and Workstation will better handle this new version of Ubuntu, until then you just need to either enable the onscreen keyboard or go the “Console Login” route and make a quick change to /etc/default/console-setup.
Working fixes found at other blogs are the best fixes, aren’t they?
[Updated: 5/5/2010]
So a commenter had issues with the use of the on-screen keyboard. First off, a left-click is just what it sounds like 
— click the left mouse-button on the icon. In other words, a “normal” mouse click.
Here’s a picture of that icon (circled in red):
When you click it, you’ll see that “Universal Access Preferences” menu item pop up. Click on that (left-click again!) and then check the box for the on-screen keyboard:
Close that dialog and the on-screen keyboard will pop up. Click in the password field to select it and then use the on-screen keyboard.
As they say down-under, Bob then becomes your uncle.
Hopefully that’ll help
As for “N” being offended that folks will post links to other posts posting links to solutions: Hey, I just like to give credit where credit is due. The Reformed Musings blog is where I found my fix so that’s where I’m pointing folks. Yeah, it is an extra mouse-click but I didn’t see the need to just copy/paste his content.
Possibly Related posts:
- Followup on my Ubuntu / Mouse Issue
- Full Ubuntu, not for the antiques
- Quick Look at VMware Player 2.50
- VMware Upgrade Policy Disappoints
- Ubuntu: Install Inside Windows
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29 Responses to “Ubuntu 10.0.4, VMware and No Keyboard”
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Flair and Sparklies
Hi Chris ;’) A few years ago I switched to using Ubuntu on my workstation, leaving my WinXP partition there for dual booting (fallback, emergencies, games ;’). Over the next year I doubt I logged into Windows more then 6 times, and felt a little like I was slumming. So I deleted the WinXP patition.
I do use Sun’s VirtualBox (WinXP and Win7) for those times when I have a client that needs an interface ‘walk-thru’, but all of my web development and coding, graphics, and personal use is now in Ubuntu (10.04 currently).
My only regret in deleting the Windows partition was, perhaps, games. There are plenty on Linux, but nothing cutting edge (I do miss BF2, etc., but that did open up a chunk of my time!). I may setup a M$ partition again, but it would be game-only.
Regarding your 7.04 experience with networking/drivers: Me too ;’) But the last 3 releases have been incredibly painless, a big improvement.
Hope this finds you well…
Hey Sam! Long time.
I’ve been bouncing back and forth between Windows and *nix for too many years now. I generally end up with one machine of each — dual-booting just gets too tedious and it seems like I’m always in the wrong OS for the task at hand.
I just started playing with 10.0.4 but I’ll agree with you in that each release is better than the one before
Hi guys,
I had the exact same idea! I have been on off *nix and M$ for a while, but always ends up with M$ in the end, because of the HUGE time consumption with googling weird fixes and setting funny bits in random files, trying to guess the arbitrary combination of -xSlIizDnx /Please for the fix command.
A good thing about the *nix world is that the oracles, that find the fixes always have time to post the answers, and even though their guide leads to another guide etc.. In the end you spend a couple of hours/days/weeks/years doing something, that you know for sure you would have expected to just work out of the box, and then you know why it didn’t work and cannot be fixed!
Well, I have been off Ubuntu for a while (Fedora, but Mostly W7) and now, with the new release, I wanted to check it out again. Looking at the login and ready to be taken away…
And what do you know. A guide, that leads to another guide, that leads… and the arbitrary bits in the random files. The naive idea from the hopefull user.. This problem was never expected. (I mean guys, we did expect the keyboard to work..)
Following the guide to the guide, I get stuck at the simple image, where left click should open for me to get a console login… Hmm… nope, no such luck (How do you left click /Please)
So now, after 5 minutes of installation and 1 hour of frustration, I amused myself in your blog, telling the rest of you guys to keep in the good fight. I simply don’t have the time to deal with this world of pain. The future students and religious users, make M$ work for their buck, but I will personally wait 2 more years while it gets sorted out..
I the keyboard works, I promise, that I will fill some random guys blog with happy, happy thoughts…
Until that time comes,
Laugh and know, that *nix is just a game of frustration, not suitable for work! I will now play M$ VS2010 instead.. Cause I am still on happy time…
/N
Ah! I see the problem. You used the “/Please” argument to the command, but these things are usually case-sensitive. Try “/please” instead. That’s probably in a man page somewhere, but I can never find the right one…
True, it’s not for the easily frustrated ;’)
It’s an ACPI problem.
I changed ACPI to PIC mode in the bios, then my mouse and keybord where working (fresh installation Ubuntu 10.4 LTS)
Ah, that’s good to know. I poked around in the VMware machine’s BIOS and didn’t see an option to change it though. What did I miss?
I didn’t set it in VMware, but on the motherboard bios.
Check comment #20, maby this will help.
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1468165&highlight=lucid+keyboard&page=2
Ah, I get it. A grub change. Thanks for the link.
Was going to test out adding
acpi=off noapicto the boot in grub, but I can’t seem to catch grub at boot time to edit it!I modified the file /etc/default/console-setup.
#XKBMODEL=”SKIP”
#XKBLAYOUT=”us”
#XKBVARIANT=”U.S. English”
#XKBOPTIONS=”"
XKBMODEL=”pc105″
XKBLAYOUT=”us”
XKBVARIANT=”"
XKBOPTIONS=”"
Sorry~ I forgot to say~
After this modification, reboot this virtual machine.
I had the same problem when i installed ubuntu 10.04 LTS on VMWare player.I solved the problem by adding Eglish United Kingdom as keyboard layout and removing English US Layout.It may not be the best solution but it worked fine for me.
Hi,
Great post and it leads me oh so close to a solution. I, too, just upgraded my vm image to Ubuntu 10.0.4 and have no keyboard on login. Just 2 small problems. 1: I am using VMware player 3.0.1 and there is no shutdown button in the login box, only at the bottom of the screen. When I click on that shutdown icon, my only choices and “Restart” and “Shutdown”. 2: When I select the option to turn on the on-screen keyboard, a window briefly flashes on the screen then disappears. This basically leaves me with no input method to login.
I’m running VMware player 3.0.1 on Windows Vista (yeah, I know). Any suggestions on how I can get login so I can apply the fix to the console-setup file?
Thanks again for the great article and links. Hoping you or someone in the community can help.
Hi,
Should have mentioned that I tried to copy/paste my password from Notepad in Windows to the login box in the vm. The paste option on the right-click pop-up box is greyed out, so that option isn’t available to me either.
Solved my own problem.
After selecting “Use on-screen keyboard”, I had to reboot. Once I did that, the on-screen keyboard appeared.
I was able to login, edit the /etc/default/console-setup file and reboot. Everything is working perfectly now.
Thanks again!
Same problem on VMWare Fusion 3.0.2 (232708)
The On Screen Keyboard appeared and disappeared immediately for me. I held down shift at the grub boot to get the grub prompt, picked recovery mode, dropped into a root shell.. and then did the special edits.
thanks for this post.
Oh, I forgot to add: the OSK worked after a reboot. So I think the OSK didn’t work for me because of the same issue.
One interesting note for me. I use 8.04LTS under VMWare workstation 7.0. I cloned my 8.04 and attempted to upgrade the clone. I get the same problem with the keyboard not working at the login screen. But unlike everybody else, and also unlike a clean install of 10.04, the keyboard doesn’t work even after logging in….
Checked all settings I can think of. No joy.
Any ideas?
VMWare Fusion 3.1 was just released which says it supports10.04. Maybe this was addressed? http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2010/05/vmware-fusion-31-better-stronger-faster-than-ever.html
Good point Steven. Player and Workstation updates were just released as well. I have already updated my Workstation (7.1) and will update Player soon and then see if this probably “magically” will go away
Just did a clean install using the new VMware Player 3.1 and the keyboard worked with no work-arounds necessary. Will try to find some time tomorrow to confirm that with VMware Workstation 7.1 as well.
Just upgraded VMware to 7.1. Tried an upgrade of 8.04LTS to 10.04. No keyboard at all. Even after logging in using onscreen keyboard.
VMware aside, I have to say I haven’t heard many success stories related to upgrading from 8.04 to 10.04.
Well, found my problem with VMware/upgrading 8.04 to 10.04. I used ssh to log in to the running 10.04 VM from another computer – then installed the VMware tools from the ssh command line, rebooted, and keyboard now works.
Now I have to deal with the fact that Eclipse got badly broken in the upgrade, and the cross-compiler we rely on no longer works and will no longer build…
As they say down-under, Bob then becomes your uncle.
ahhh.. i think you meant “Bob’s ya Uncle!”
Here’s a snippet to permanently solve this issue:
In the file –
/etc/default/console-setup.
XKBMODEL=”SKIP”
XKBLAYOUT=”us”
XKBVARIANT=”U.S. English”
XKBOPTIONS=”"
XKBMODEL=”pc105″
XKBLAYOUT=”us”
XKBVARIANT=”"
XKBOPTIONS=”"
Reboot and be free of the on screen keyboard.
Source: https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2010-April/011259.html
Thank You so much, great help !
Best wishes and regards
Hi guys,
Setup VM and select install virtual machine later select linux and Ubuntu. Start the Virtual machine and install like you would do normal. Now the keyboard is available after the installation.