HAL, that really narrows it down. Google led me to a forum thread on Intrepid xorg.conf - input section. The official recommendation is to run sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup ... but of course it doesn't allow for options like ctrl/capslock. (It does let you specify which key ...
and even when it's installed, it sometimes runs and sometimes doesn't. (I haven't figured out what controls whether it decides to run). Hal isn't even supposed to be needed on Lucid -- it's supposed to usedevicekit(renamed to)udisks for that. ...