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I've been using Ubuntu 22.04LTS Desktop for over a year now (on a Ryzen 9 5950X, which is awesome, but I don't think that matters).

The specific version is:

sudo dmesg | head -1 | fmt -w 80
[    0.000000] Linux version 5.15.0-60-generic (buildd@lcy02-amd64-054)
(gcc (Ubuntu 11.3.0-1ubuntu1~22.04) 11.3.0, GNU ld (GNU Binutils for Ubuntu)
2.38) #66-Ubuntu SMP Fri Jan 20 14:29:49 UTC 2023 (Ubuntu 5.15.0-60.66-generic
5.15.78)

All of a sudden a few weeks ago, probably as a result of some auto-update, the media keys (volume up/down, pause/continue, mute, next song/prev song, etc.) have stopped working altogether. The keyboard is a Microsoft Keyboard 4000, with dedicated media keys (no key combinations e.g. Fn+...).

I've looked at similar questions, but they seem quite old. The most recent answers I found include this answer and that answer. Both recommend restarting pipe-session-manager, but it did nothing to help the situation. On the contrary, it entirely shut down all my audio, and after various attempts to "nicely" revive it, I had to reboot.

What can I do to even diagnose the problem?

FWIW, I tried to monitor events via evtest, tried all 5 devices with a name containing Microsoft_KM-V1.a, but I cannot see any event triggered when I press any of the media keys.

Edit When looking at journalctl --since today | tail just after hitting a few of the media keys, I see the puzzling message:

..... /usr/libexec/gdm-x-session[10302]: (EE) event2  - Microsoft_KM-V1.a: client bug: event processing lagging behind by 37ms, your system is too slow

It is puzzling because the specs of that machine are quite good and it is lightning fast (see the Geekbench 6 results).

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    I'd look at what actually changed when the keyboard stopped working as you wanted... ie. if I note a change that was unexpected esp. after reboot/login compared to prior session, I explore the system logs & what updated during the last session for changes. Did you look? I assume this is a desktop system (you didn't actually specify what 22.04) where a recent change for systems using the HWE kernel was from 5.15 to 5.19 kernel; did you explore if that's why? Did you boot an older kernel at grub & it works again? If so that may give you an alternative (use GA kernel stack) or more info...
    – guiverc
    Feb 15, 2023 at 0:53
  • Added specific os version. It would be great if I could pinpoint when exactly it stopped working. No such luck, as I am often on the move. The best I can figure out is that it stopped working within the last 6 weeks or so. Isn't there a way to diagnose what may be happening? I've pored over /var/log/syslog etc. but no luck.
    – Pierre D
    Feb 15, 2023 at 22:37
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    Same issue for me; I upgraded from 20.04 and was then unable to use my keyboard media keys. Even trying to bind it does not work.
    – Brendan
    Mar 9, 2023 at 9:31

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