Description:
After updating to the current version of cinnamon (1.7.4-2) the custom shortcuts (set by cinnamon-settings) and laptop function keys (such as Fn + arrow up), used to control brightness and volume, have ceased to work. This happens only with cinnamon, as starting with gnome-session or kde swiftly solves the problem and all of the keys work properly. Additionally, when on cinnamon, if I try to control the backlight using xbacklight or similar, it works fine. I installed acpid and manually configured handlers to change the brightness when the key combinations are pressed, which also works fine.

It started happening immediately after the upgrade to version 1.7.4, which was incidentally when a bunch of gnome-related packages got updated. A possibly related problem is that choosing a different keyboard layout from cinnamon-settings does nothing, and I have to manually add a layout in the xorg.conf.d folder as instructed by the wiki. I'm not sure what additional info or logs are required, but I'll gladly provide anything asked.

I would also like to note that this kept happening after a system format with only cinnamon and a few related packages installed.

Additional info:
* package version(s)

cinnamon-1.7.4-2
cinnamon-control-center-1.7.3-3
xf86-input-synaptics-1.7.0-1

* config and/or log files etc.

Hardware: Samsung RF511-S09CL laptop.
Doesn't produce an actual error message so nothing here.

Steps to reproduce:
Install cinnamon. Attempt to set custom shortcut (such as Ctrl + Alt + T for gnome-terminal) or use custom keyboard keys (in my case, Fn + up/left/right/down).