I was finally able to do some hunting around Launchpad to find out why the numeric keypad on my keyboard “broke” once I got Ubuntu Hardy installed, and I was able to find a workaround for it. It’s also not a Hardy bug after all but a GNOME bug, and I’ve got both a workaround and bug links for all that need it.
First off, there’s an easy workaround for it. Go into the Keyboard Preferences (System >Preferences > Keyboard) and go to the Mouse Keys tab. Simply uncheck the box for Allow to control the pointer using the keyboard. (I know the grammar sucks on that sentence. I need to find a bug for that as well.)Â That will let users of Ubuntu Hardy, and other distros that use GNOME 2.22, to regain the use of their numeric keypad.
There are two bugs for this on file. for Ubuntu Launchpad has bug #197589: Numeric keypad no longer works after upgrade. That bug actually pointed me to the GNOME bug on Bugzilla, #521197 – Numeric keypad no longer works after upgrade. With any luck we’ll have this fixed for the next milestone for Hardy.
![[image]](http://mowser.com/img?url=http%3A%2F%2F3.bp.blogspot.com%2F-vf-Rix0ENJI%2FTxZsWuiIt_I%2FAAAAAAAAAqs%2F95_b-B4V9NM%2Fs1600%2FNETBUG.jpg)
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25 April 2008 at 9:34 am
Hey, thanks for this hint.
I was just getting mad of this.
You saved my live
25 April 2008 at 11:42 am
Glad I could help.
I thought I’d seen that the bug had been fixed but I guess it hasn’t. Damn.
25 April 2008 at 12:28 pm
Yup, that solved the problem. Gracias
25 April 2008 at 2:23 pm
Just upgraded from 7.10 to 8.04, and numeric pad stopped working. Did a Google search, and found your post. Awesome, worked perfectly. Thanks!
26 April 2008 at 3:30 pm
Just came across this having googled… you should be getting some nice hits because of them. You might want to buy some adwords!
27 April 2008 at 5:48 am
Thanks a lot, Nanci. Worked perfectly.
27 April 2008 at 9:24 am
Just like Grant, after a Google Search, i found your post and it work perfectly. Thanks.
28 April 2008 at 7:54 pm
gracias, excelente
30 April 2008 at 1:22 pm
This fix works but it’s not always persistant. I’ve rebooted back to the setting being re-enabled on its own. Not every time though.
30 April 2008 at 1:27 pm
That’s odd. I’ve never lost my NumLock setting since I applied the fix I stated. Not sure why your setting it would have been lost.
2 May 2008 at 9:16 am
Just upgraded to 8.04 & the keypad stopped working here as well
So Google brought me here for a fix , Thnx dude !
peace
3 May 2008 at 7:34 pm
Thanks solve my problem too!.
4 May 2008 at 8:40 am
fantastic, worked like a charm!
4 May 2008 at 3:06 pm
THANKS!
5 May 2008 at 5:19 am
Thanks alot!
I found this site by googling | ubuntu numerical keyboard stopped working
7 May 2008 at 11:01 am
Thanks! Gonna try it as soon as I arrive home!
11 May 2008 at 7:36 pm
Thanks for the fix, mate. Works perfectly. I wondered what had gone wrong, thought it may have been something I had done
THanks again.
Aaron
15 May 2008 at 3:48 pm
Wow, fixed my problem as well. Thanks for the tip.
17 May 2008 at 9:56 am
You rock!!! Thanks. Balancing a checkbook without those keys was a pain in the ***
18 May 2008 at 3:28 pm
Thank you for reminding me of this, but now that I know what it is I feel kind of stupid because I had known about this before but didn’t think about it. you can also push shift numberlock to toggle it, at least on my setup.
18 May 2008 at 3:36 pm
Actually that didn’t work so well in my experience. Glad it works for others.
25 May 2008 at 4:08 pm
Hey Peng
Thanks a lot. I was just beginning to think about Windows XP again. It was a big step for me switching to Linux……..
25 May 2008 at 4:23 pm
Glad I was able to help. I’m surprised they shipped hardy with that little glitch in there.
29 May 2008 at 3:01 pm
My problem just recently occured, and I didnt exactly know how it even happened. I thjought maybe toggling back and forth with Compiz settings. Anyways, num pad is working again, that box in keyboard settings was already unchecked. I resolved the issue by Shift + 7 on the num pad.
30 May 2008 at 3:46 pm
sweet! this has bugged me since the upgrade on release day. i finally got around to googling the problem and your post came up and fixed the problem for me!
30 May 2008 at 11:32 pm
thank you very very very very much…
1 June 2008 at 11:34 pm
cool– i would not find it myself… I tryed stop gdm to go in linux command line only to verify numlock there–it worked–so i figured out it is problem inside qui configs…
Thanks for topic
2 June 2008 at 3:27 pm
Worked perfectly
Thanks a lot
I started to learn how to live without numeric keypad
3 June 2008 at 9:22 pm
/*-789+456+123
0.
Thank you to for the allow setting into number keypad. This user much under allow appreciate needful this day.
ALL YOUR BASE ARE BELONG TO US!
7 June 2008 at 5:20 pm
Thank you so much! Essential, easy… Sherlock Holmes!
22 June 2008 at 3:49 am
Yay that helped!
Thanks alot, I was thinking it was due to my cordless keyboard, and almost breaked it untill I saw that the keys worked in the login screen but not after it…
Thanks!
23 June 2008 at 8:33 am
Weirdly, this only became a problem on one of my three Hardy installs. One is a laptop so I won’t count that, but on two desktops with identical keyboards (both from the same case even) I only list the keypad on one of them.
This fixed it though! Thanks!
28 June 2008 at 12:32 am
That did it! Thanks!
21 July 2008 at 2:20 pm
Thanks!
21 July 2008 at 7:58 pm
i don’t know why but for me the reverse is working..if i uncheck then i have to give acpi=off while booting and if i check then keypad and mouse works fine
31 July 2008 at 5:09 am
HVALA VELIKO! (in Serbian)
Thanks a lot! I was on the edge with my nerves.
Greetings from Serbia
11 August 2008 at 11:27 pm
u da man!!!!
thanx a bunch
19 August 2008 at 2:26 pm
Thank God, you are a life saver
That was driving me nutts for days.
Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you Thank you !!!!!!!!!
4 September 2008 at 3:04 am
Thank you very much!
21 September 2008 at 8:48 pm
Yes this works, not sure how I got myself into this, but somehow a specific key sequence activates the accessibilities option and renders the numeric keypad unusable
1 October 2008 at 5:58 am
Thanks for that…..you just saved my sanity
5 October 2008 at 1:51 pm
Worked. I think the should have keep it unchecked by default. Cheers.
1 November 2008 at 6:36 am
Thank you ! Finaly my numeric keypad is accessible !
5 November 2008 at 3:58 pm
I have been using this workaround for months, unchecking “Allow to control the pointer using the keyboard” only persists for a few days or weeks, and they suddenly rechecks itself after a restart. Is there anything I can tweak in some configuration that would lock this down? It’s really freaking annoying to lose your work when Gnome borks itself without warning.
I am sure most people here have discovered the same, but few posted it. It’s an ongoing problem.
19 November 2008 at 8:13 am
works great. Thanks.
4 December 2008 at 11:55 pm
Thank you for the solution. However, I’m with Matt. What causes this? What key combination am I doing that keep re-enabling this? It is VERY annoying.
5 December 2008 at 7:16 am
I’m not sure why it keeps resetting, other than during distro updates. There seem to be something in the update process that normalizes settings, and someone should probably file a bug on that (if one isn’t filed already, of course). If you find a key combination that forces it to be reset please let us know.
9 December 2008 at 3:29 pm
Worked a treat, thanks!
11 December 2008 at 6:16 am
Oh man, thanks a lot for that, it was driving me up the wall!
17 December 2008 at 9:00 am
Excelente solución, gracias!!!
5 January 2009 at 4:29 pm
Looks like Muphry’s Law strikes again.
You criticize the grammar in the dialog box:
I know the grammar sucks on that sentence. I need to find[sic] a bug for that as well.
Then you follow up in the next sentence with this little chestnut:
That will let users of Ubuntu Hardy … to regain the use of their numeric keypad.
Awesome
Thanks for the tip though. 0123456789. Aaaaah. Sweet numbers.
7 January 2009 at 9:20 am
Perfect!!! Thanks!
4 February 2009 at 7:06 am
THANsK ALLOTz !!
Now my koabard weurkz fined agoen !! Thaz rilleay look.
25 May 2009 at 2:59 pm
Keypad suddenly broke on jaunty. Your suggestion helped!
Thanks!
Rob
12 June 2009 at 5:16 pm
Man, thank you. You saved my life! Damn, I was lost without my numeric keypad … Thanks and God bless you!
17 July 2009 at 6:55 pm
tnx… the only bug left for me now is the LED indicator doesn’t change. still far better then before.
18 August 2009 at 3:25 am
Thanks for that – an absolute sanity saver on my HP Pro Book!
22 September 2009 at 4:57 am
Wonderful!
24 September 2009 at 5:42 pm
Thank you, have been tearing config files and my hair off to find why this didn’t work.
8 October 2009 at 8:31 am
Thank you very much
I’m running Karmic 9.10 Beta and I’ve just experienced this problem of no Numeric Keypad.
I’ve never had this problem before in any of the other versions so Thanks Again !
25 October 2009 at 9:54 pm
Enough of this already. 4 versions in a row, and it STILL keeps forgetting the mouse keys settings. No matter how many times I turn it off, it turns itself back on again after a couple hours — no reboot required!
Am I glad to have a workaround? Yes.
Should there still be a need for this workaround? No.
26 October 2009 at 8:36 am
That’s odd. I don’t have the issue with the upgrade. It may be an issue for clean installs though since I didn’t check that this time. The GNOME bug I link to has been closed with a status of NOTGNOME but the Launchpad bug is still open. You may want to post a comment on the LP bug to make sure they know that this is still a very annoying bug in karmic. I’m surprised it didn’t get fixed in the papercuts push.
9 November 2009 at 6:40 am
hey buddy just wanna thank you for this, u r fantastic my dear’ thanks.
10 November 2009 at 3:45 pm
great ! thanks from France
11 November 2009 at 7:30 pm
Thank you very much! The problem also happens with Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala running GNOME 2.28.1.
Cheers from Brazil!
12 November 2009 at 9:11 am
Yeah, I noticed the same thing when I ran the LiveCD. I should update the article to make it clear that the issue is still present in 9.10.
I’m also noiticing that since an update this week I now have to enter my password to log onto my wired network. This is definitely a recurrance that is ticking me off since it’s also affecting some applets I run.
14 November 2009 at 12:13 am
Thank you. You made my day with this solution.
29 November 2009 at 7:37 am
Thank you
This happened to me after the last 9.10 Update. Most grateful to you for this fix.
29 November 2009 at 10:14 am
Glad it helped you. Although I hope we can finally dispense with the need for it in 10.04, especially since it will be a Long Term Support (LTS) release.
6 December 2009 at 5:04 pm
Thanks,this saved me a headache.
11 December 2009 at 2:32 pm
Thanks! I’m running 9.04 (upgrade from 8.10), and never had this problem until some recent updates and a reboot. I don’t know why it decided to get me now…
19 December 2009 at 1:35 pm
Thanks a lot for this hint.
24 January 2010 at 5:31 pm
Thanks a lot!! I was getting angry with this!
27 January 2010 at 5:56 am
yeah, u rock man, i’ve been battling wit dis for months now, thot my keyboard is bad, so i go get another one, but the problem still persist, tnx to u man, I CAN NOW USE MY NUMERIC KEYYYYYYYSSS