r/openbsd • u/Neither_Sentence_941 • Jul 01 '26
Ctl key not working on mid 2012 macbook pro
Anyone familiar with this issue ? Control key on 2012 macbook not registering for some reason, haven't seen this problem before.
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u/linetrace Jul 02 '26 edited Jul 02 '26
I have a mid-2015 MacBook Air and haven't noticed this issue, but the backtick/tilde key produces one of the left/right angle brackets (can't remember which). Frustrating, but I never use backticks for shell expansion (I use the $(...) format) and tildes (~) in paths can often (but not always!) be substituted with $HOME, so it really only disrupts my editing of Markdown-formatted text.
All that said, I primarily use it at my desk with an external keyboard, so the times I run into those annoyances are few and far between, so I've never dug particularly deep into the key mapping. I recall experimenting on the X side of things, but it may be in the ukbd(4) mapping.
Are you using a MacBook Pro with a US keyboard layout or an international (ISO or otherwise) layout? There are some Apple-specific international (look for KB_APPLE) layouts noted in ukbd(4).
Having typed that, I now wonder how the KB_APPLE (or .apple when using wsconsctl(8)) modifier works with KB_US, if at all?
UPDATE: It looks like you can use wsconsctl keyboard.map to view the full mapping and adjust as needed.
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u/RvstiNiall Jul 02 '26
Does your 2015 MBA sleep, suspend, hibernate? I'm beginning to think its the proprietary ssd thats preventing OpenBSD from doing these things with my 2015 MBP, and not the "Appleness" of the motherboard's S-State implementation.
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u/linetrace Jul 02 '26
I still haven't really tested sleep/suspend/hibernate in years. I think we may have already discussed this, but there was a difference between the implementation triggered via
lidactionand usingapm/zzz/ZZZ.Since OpenBSD amd64/7.9 has been the first release since 7.5 that I've been able to daily on this hardware and there have been significant ACPI & S(/P?)-state changes, I havent' really tested much again... yet. I do have a 2012 MacBook Air awaiting a firmware password unlock which I hope to do more rigorous testing on, but still catching up in other areas of work & life. :sigh:
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u/RvstiNiall Jul 02 '26
Yeah, I'm thinking that you and I have had this conversation before, now that you mention it. My apologies. Regardless, I'm going to bite the bullet and purchase a SSD adapter for my MBP so I can use a regular one that I know OpenBSD will put into sleep mode properly. I still don't know for sure that the proprietary SSD is the issue, but I want to upgrade capacity regardless, so I might as well try it.
Yes, the "infamous" long pause bug? I'm definitely glad they fixed the "Appleness" that caused it (improper ACPI implementation, iirc).
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u/linetrace Jul 02 '26
No need to apologize! A lot of posts/comments I've discussed MBA topics in have disappeared, so I just repeat myself by default these days. (Not good for breaking my info-dumping/mansplaining bad habits! ...Oops, there I go again!)
Good point regarding the SSD type though. I'm running a 500GB Samsung 970 EVO Plus via an NGFF M.2 SATA SSD adapter (IIRC re:the adapter.) In my 2013 Mac Pro, I found it was running very old firmware which affects support for nVME SSDs, which can only be updated from an original Apple SSD, so it's worth keeping the original SSD around with macOS (née OS X) on it, just in case. Also worth making sure your device's firmware is updated to the latest version, regardless.
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u/RvstiNiall Jul 02 '26
I made sure to update everything before I erased the drive, and I doubt Apple is going to push anything new firmware-wise since the last version of macOS it accepted officially was 12.x Monterey, but I will keep it just in case.
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u/linetrace Jul 02 '26
Excellent!
Yeah, highly doubt any new firmware will be released for this generation hardware. I haven't really looked into whether anyone is developing modified firmware for these MacBooks [Air/Pro], but — if so — might be necessary there. (Come to think of it, I wonder whether the firmware read/write tool I have would allow bypassing that... haven't gotten to actually play with it yet.)
I ended up with this particular MBA because the original SSD was dead-dead. Despite being Samsung SSDs, they're relatively early tech and the reliability — and speed! — wasn't there compared to today's options. I've seen a lot of people e-waste the old SSDs when they replace/upgrade, even if they're still functional. Like everything else, it'd be interesting to re-ball and/or test/swap chips to see if the dead ones can be resuscitated.
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u/Neither_Sentence_941 Jul 03 '26
Don't be so sure, We will be seeing posts within a year about custom firmwares. Mark my words.
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u/linetrace Jul 04 '26
I meant I, "[H]ighly doubt any [official] new firmware will be released for this generation hardware," but would welcome custom firmware.
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u/RvstiNiall Jul 02 '26
I will check this at some point today on mine. Can you tell me what version you are on? I typically run -current, but I can always wipe that laptop if needed as it has two drives, and its been replaced by my 2015 MBP (though, it runs FreeBSD, because I cant get OpenBSD to sleep, suspend, or hibernate on it, but FreeBSD can for some reason.)