Mr. Virtualization
While working with a Linux virtual machine, an annoying error keeps flashing past on the console:
unknown scancode e0 01
unknown scancode e0 59
sometimes they fill up the whole screen. I noticed that someone else on the web was experiencing this problem and they are, like me, using a Microsoft Wireless keyboard. Apparently, the keyboard sends extra keycodes that Debian does not know what to do with.
I found some instructions to map the unknown scancodes to blank commands:
setkeycodes e001 125
setkeycodes e059 126
and the problem is gone and I learned something about Linux…. all because of the ease of getting exposure to lots of operating systems with VMWare. Man, I want to become Mr. VMware. or, more broadly, Mr. Virtualization. Virtual machines are a way to host a guest operating system on your computer. They are available as preset “appliances”. They can be used for many different things. For example, if you want to see what a virus does when it infects your machine, you can infect a virtual machine and then erase the entire virtual machine when you are done. If you want to try out Linux, you can just download a Linux VMWare appliance and run it. No installation headaches. I first heard of VMWare a few years ago, but back then it cost several hundred dollars for the software to make this happen, but now that VMWare player is free free free, the party can begin.
October 11th, 2006 at 5:01 pm
I am so glad that I am not the only one with this problem. I own a Microsoft Wireless Comfort Keyboard, and when I installed the lastest version of Debian linux (for 386) I started getting the following errors:
unknown scancode e0 01
unknown scancode e0 59
When I am typing, these pop up in the middle of the text (I am using it in a text-only mode). When I press backspace, the text is not removed from the screen, making it a problem to run applications and such.
Anyway… thanks for posting this. You have definately helped me :)
Thanks!
November 6th, 2006 at 11:03 pm
The ‘I found some instructions’ link seems broken.
I got here by searching for answers to the same problem you describe here. I didn’t know that 125 and 126 are blank commands. Thanks!
November 7th, 2006 at 8:50 am
glad to hear there are other linux users who admit to using microsoft wireless keyboard. I fixed the link
December 14th, 2006 at 3:02 am
@Tim: AWESOME fix! I honestly had almost given up and deleted my debian VMware virtual machine and moved on to a standalone box with connected and suggested input peripherals. One problem though, this fix only works (for me atleast) for the current session. Once the virtual machine has been stopped/restarted or rebooted, these settings are lost. Is there any way [that you know of] to persist these settings permanently to the configuration of the machine?
December 14th, 2006 at 11:07 am
I edited the .bashrc file and added those commands, this causes those two commands to be run automatically when the shell comes up.
you would need to set the vm’s hard disk to indepentent-persistent to permanently save this for the next time you turn it on.
July 9th, 2008 at 7:23 am
thank you, this is very useful to get rid of those annoying errors. i’ve been searching on the debian mailing list and different forums and NOONE knows what to do but they give instructions to reconfigure console-data and tocheck the xwindow keyboard mapping.. what a waste of time! this is exactlly what you need, make it ignore these errors that fill the screen. sad it didn’t show up on google in the first place!