KeySonic ACK-540RF wireless keyboard (possibly other "short" keyboards) with PCLinuxOS
This issue has been a pain in the butt! I had to change distro's in the past because I could not get this keyboard to work correctly with PClos. The problem will raise its ugly head even when using the live CD. Installation is not even possible unless you are aware of the problem! If you have one of these keyboards the input is not as it should be. Typing any of the following letters mjkluio will actually result in 0123456 being typed. So, if you were to try and install to your hard drive, when you are asked to provide the root password (root) what you will actually type is r66t. As the password is hidden, you will NEVER know. In fact you will probably give up! Even the guest password (guest) will be typed as g4est, again hidden.
OK, so what exactly is going on here............If you look carefully at these keys uiojklm you will see that they also have a small purple symbol at the top right corner, these are the numbers being typed. Your keyboard is "number locked" and that's where the problem is. To get around this issue simply hold down the Fn key (bottom left) while typing. It is also possible to press Fn and Numlk (the delete key in Fn mode) which should turn number lock off. To test this open a text editor and type with the offending keys. This temporary measure will suffice for an installation. HOWEVER, once you boot into the installed system your keyboard will have returned to its "nightmare" mode, remember this at Login when typing your password (if it uses any of the effected keys). If you have another keyboard (hard wired ps2 etc.) it might be advisable to install/play with the live disk using this.
Once your installed system is up and running go to PCC (configure your computer)/System/manage system services by enabling or disabling them/ Scroll down the list until you find numlock and remove the tick from the start at boot box.
Reboot, problem solved.
Pete
