[lug] keyboard weirdness after updates....

[bgiles]

I've been updating my system and getting very bizarre results.

1) switching from xdm/enlightenment to gdm/gnome resulted in my X 
session losing every other character.  That's not quite right - once I 
got into gnome and brought up a terminal it looked like I was getting 
special 16-bit characters instead of just dropping every other 
character.  I don't know why this would have changed, but the keyboard 
was fine at a virtual terminal.

2) I explicitly updated the x-server and now the system locks up once it 
hits X.  This even happens with knoppix!  I've tried booting into 
single-user mode but I don't seem to have the root password now, one of 
the drawbacks of always using sudo.  (I thought I had changed it to a 
known value, but it's not working.)  I've tried to boot into a text-only 
knoppix mode but am having unrelated problems.

Has anyone else seen keyboard problems related to X?  I don't think it's 
hardware since the keyboard still works, e.g., when entering knoppix 
options when booting from a CD.

P.S., I know, the usual answer is to ssh into the system.  But the 
network isn't working.  I don't know if there were problems related to 
the update or if the system is locking up that hard.

TIA

Bear