Deadkeys and XF86config
 

I working on a new Gentoo install on my machine. (Redhat 7.2 upgraded to 8.0 upgraded to 9.0 just wasnt doing it for me anymore)

Heres my problem: Some keys on my keyboard do not work as expected. For example, the double quote key (to the left of the colon) accents the next character typed, eg é or ó or ú. I cannot get it to behave normally. (Notice the lack of apostrophes and double quotes in this post.)

I think this might be because I accidently enabled dead keys the first time I ran XF86config. I have rerun the program several times since (with various settings), and still cant get my keyboard to behave normally.

Here is the keyboard section out of my XF86Config file:

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Any ideas? Im assuming theres some setting somewhere that Im missing, but I really dont know where to look. Thanks.

Are you getting this problems under X? Because, if its under X, you might need to use the correct xmodmap to your keyboard layout. At /usr/share/xmodmap you have a list of maps. Then type:

xmodmap <your xmodmap here>

And see if it helps :D Mine is a swedish layout, so xmodmap xmodmap.se works fine for me.
I can't remember if after that, you can to copy you xmodmap to /etc/.Xmodmap or to your home directory or load it at the start up. Well, see if it helps first and I find where to put it for you :)

Good luck

Bingo! That did the trick, but the change disappeared at restart. Anyone know how to make this change persistant? There's a variable for the keymap in /etc/rc.conf , but it's already set to US.

Hi again oasisbob!!!

I'm glad it helped :) Now let's see if we can get it to work at start up. I'm not pretty sure how to make it starts automatically. But try this in this order, if does not work, try the next one, but do not delete what you've done previously. Perhaps some real Slackware fellow can help here :).

1 - Try making a copy from your xmodmap at /home/user using this code:

Note: xmodmap has been renamed to .Xmodmap at your home directory. It's necessary, so stick with the code above ;)

2 - If still not working, try this. Make a copy of your xmodmap to /etc/X11. This is an older procedure that is not necessary unless you have an older XFree86 (It can't be with Gentoo), yet, we never know how different distros works, so... Use this code:

3 - If still not working, before you get mad at me, this is the last thing to do..hehe :). Open you xinitrc located at /etc/X11 and add a line with xmodmap < your keyboard layout here > right after the command which starts X. This is very personal, because I login in text mode, so maybe you have to put somewhere else if you start in graphical mode. Some peoples/distros have xinitrc at their home directory, so it's pretty much up to you where to add this line, at xinitrc or Xclients.

There's one problem using xmodmap though under Slackware. I don't know if you will face the same problem with Gentoo. After calling xmodmap, I'm unable to kill X using ctrl + alt + backspace. If you also face this problem and find a way around it please tell me :) heheh.

Good luck my friend. Hope this works ;)