Re: Broken arrow keys for browser access to proxmox and ESXi

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

Update on this.

I wanted to confirm this was related to the NetBSD xserver/keyboard
behaviour, rather than something in the NetBSD web-browser build

Running firefox installed on a NetBSD machine to display on a Linux
system does not show the issue, so that seems to confirm that.

Does this ring any bells for anyone?

Thanks

David

On Wed, 31 Dec 2025 at 21:22, David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost> wrote:
>
> Just throwing this out there in case anyone else is seeing something
> similar or has any ideas.
>
> I'm using NetBSD to access some proxmox and ESXi systems via a web browser.
>
> In each case when I try to use the in-browser console access to any of
> the VMs the arrow keys are broken - specifically down arrow appears to
> return newline, and left & right arrow nothing.
>
> This has been confirmed in Firefox and Chromium.
>
> proxmox is using the https://novnc.com/info.html to provide the
> console, "Who Can Tell" regarding ESXi, but as we're retiring our last
> ESXi box soon I'm less concerned, other than it is interesting it has
> the same behaviour.
>
> From a hunt around I see reports of similar behaviour with
> - xorgxrdp from 2016 - https://github.com/neutrinolabs/xrdp/issues/355
> - XRDP/x2go - https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/novnc-arrow-keys-misinterpreted-when-connected-via-xrdp-x2go.164816/
> - freebsd install issue
> https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/problems-with-keyboard-in-freebsd-installation-as-vm.55307/
>
> I'm wondering if novnc might be hardcoding a set whatever Linux uses
> as standard keysyms for its keys...
>
> Thanks
>
> David