I am using Gnome3/Gnome Shell/Ubuntu 11.10. Today, when I began using my machine, it would not co-operate with me. Trying to type simple documents, my SHIFT-p was captured -- and spawned an xterm window!
I have no idea how I may have caused this anomaly. But I searched the various locations trying to find the culprit...
I checked the "Shortcuts" tab of the "System Settings|Hardware|Keyboard" applet... no assignment to SHIFT-p in any of these lists...
I checked the Commands panel in "CompizConfig Settings Manager" (from Gnome Menu|Other)... no assignment there either.
After reading some other related keymapping issues asked in askubuntu, I brought up the xev application to see what it would report... while programmatically pressing each key on the keyboard, examining the report from xev, I learned that SHIFT-w-w is also mapped to bring up an xterm!
while exploring, it appears (using ps -ef), that both commands are mapped to "sh -c xterm"...
How can I fix this? I don't know where to turn next.
ps -ef
reports three processes being initiated each time I press SHIFT-p (or SHIFT-w-w):
* sh -c xterm
* xterm
* bash
Can anyone help me to troubleshoot this problem?
UPDATE
The problem boiled down to an issue with my .xbindkeysrc.scm file. I had explored a tutorial on the topic some weeks back and had downloaded a tutorial (.xbindkeysrc.scm) file. After playing with the tutorial for a little while, I disabled the file.
When doing some housekeeping on my system this morning, I inadvertently re-enabled the file. This caused the mysterious behavior.