Cannot type password to unlock screensaver on SuSE based Linux

I have just recently experience a very annoying problem about locked screensaver, and fortunately after spending sometime I have been able to resolve the problem.

Here’s the issue : I have fall asleep with my notebook still on running JDS 3 Linux, and the screensaver kicks into action. When I am awake later, I found out that I cannot type anything into the password box. In the past I have encounter similar problem, and I type Ctrl+Shift+Tab to get the cursor back into the password box, but it doesn’t work this time. Maybe when I was asleep some other key got pressed accidentaly that complicate the problem. Because it is already late, I decided just to push the power button and fortunately the power management daemon recognize the event and shutdown the OS properly.

I was hopping that when I boot up the OS again the problem will be resolved on its own. When I boot up the OS again everything look normal, at least I can login into the OS using my user.

Later I found out, that although I can login into my gnome desktop, I cannot type anything. The mouse is still working, but everytime I try to type something into terminal or gaim password box, nothings come out and I can only hear the speaker beeps.

I decided to try to logout using the menu, and login again using root account. The root account works normally, both mouse and keyboard is working. So there is some setting wrong in my account, but I do not know where.

To investigate which setting is the culprit, I create a new home directory from the root user account, and edit the /etc/passwd file so my ordinary user would use that new home directory.

After using the new home directory I can login again into my account, but all my settings are gone (the wallpaper, gaim setting, panel, custom shortcut and nautilus scripts). I know there are some hidden directory under the home directory of each user in which gnome store its settings and configuration.

One by one I tested copying the hidden directories from my old home dir to my new home dir. I found out that when I copy the hidden directory .gconf to the new home dir, then the keyboard is locked. Under the .gconf there are some directories, one of them must contain the file that locks my keyboard, and to make a long story short it is the file inside the folder $HOME/.gconf/desktop/gnome/accesibility/keyboard

The content can also be edited using GConf configuration editor, all I have to do is just untick the checkbox enable and my keyboard works again. I notice that the new created account don’t have this accessibility folder so I decided to just remove the accesibility folder from my $HOME/.gconf/desktop/gnome folder. I guess that returns it to default setting for accesibility portion.

After finding this out I can edit again the /etc/passwd file to point my user to its former home directory.

Hope this information is usefull to anyone encountering the same problem as I did.

Later I will share how I update the yahoo emoticon in gaim to the latest available emoticon from yahoo.