modifiers are lost due to vmware

I have experiences the following several times now with 3.5.99.17. All of a sudden shift and ctrl are not working properly anymore:

$ setxkbmap -query
rules:      base
model:      evdev
layout:     de

Looks fine.

$ xmodmap
xmodmap:  up to 3 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):

shift     
lock      
control   
mod1      
mod2      
mod3      
mod4      
mod5        Mode_switch (0x8)

Wait, what's going on here?

Let's set the keymap rules again:

$ setxkbmap -rules base

$ xmodmap
xmodmap:  up to 4 keys per modifier, (keycodes in parentheses):

shift       Shift_L (0x32),  Shift_R (0x3e)
lock        Caps_Lock (0x42)
control     Control_L (0x25),  Control_R (0x6d)
mod1        Alt_L (0x40),  Meta_L (0x9c)
mod2        Num_Lock (0x4d)
mod3                                                                                                                                                                                                 
mod4        Super_L (0x73),  Super_R (0x74),  Super_L (0x7f),  Hyper_L (0x80)                                                                                                                        
mod5        Mode_switch (0x8),  ISO_Level3_Shift (0x7c)

Back to normal again.

How can this happen? I suspect VMware Workstation 14 being the culprit but that's not verified yet. There are several hints, e.g. https://communities.vmware.com/thread/150155. That thread mentions that it works fine with Xorg 7.2 and break with xorg 7.3 As we have switched the xkb code to the Xorg 7.3 level just recently I suspect we are suffering the same issue (even if VMware is much newer nowadays...)

I see this on CentOS 7.5, but this might be universal, see e.g. here: https://askubuntu.com/questions/493404/ubuntu-14-04-vmware-6-left-ctrl-and-right-shift-not-functioning

ArcticaProject / nx-libs

modifiers are lost due to vmware #755