Comment

JW

For people stumbling upon this post, 4 years later:

The problem "please release the following keys within 2 seconds:" happens when the xmodmap command is executed while the keys are held down. By adding the commands to ~/.bashrc, they are executed each time a terminal is opened, causing this error to appear each time.

In fact, you only want to run the xmodmap command once, when you log in. So, add it to ~/.bash_profile or ~/.profile instead (these are only run once)! Also make sure you don't include .profile from .bashrc (which I unfortunately did and spent much time figuring out...)

Parent comment

jody

I am also an intense hater of CapsLock, and was happy to find your excellent tip, which has worked well so far. But on my new Installation, whenever i open a new terminal (Ctrl-Alt-T) from an open xterm, i get a message like the following in the new window xmodmap: please release the following keys within 2 seconds: Control_L (keysym 0xffe3, keycode 37) Shift_L (keysym 0xffe1, keycode 50) before the fist prompt appears (BTW; i hadn't pressed any of those keys). This message does not appear when xterm is started from the menu. When i remove the xmodmap-command, this message does not occur. Does anybody know what this means?