Keyboard trouble

max2004 · 11-09-2006, 03:08 PM

Hi,

I run Gentoo with KDE and I have a german keyboard (Cherry RS 6000 M). However only the "basic" keys work, i.e. no "@", no "|", no umlauts like "ü", no backslash. And the KDE Keyboard Tool (the little flag in the panel that indicates which keyboard layout you are using) shows "ERR: Error changing keyboard layout to 'de(nodeadkeys)'" (or "... to 'en(basic)'"). In the KDE Control Center I set

Keyboard model: Generic 104-key PC (tried several other)
Active layouts: "us basic" and "de nodeadkeys" (tried also "de basic")

Here is my /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Code:

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier	"X.Org Configured"
	Screen	0	"Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice	"Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
	InputDevice	"PS/2 Mouse" "AlwaysCore"
...
Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier	"Keyboard0"
	Driver	"kbd"
	Option	"CoreKeyboard"
	Option	"XkbRules" "xorg"
	Option	"XkbModel" "pc104"
	Option	"XkbOptions" "grp:toggle,grp_led:scroll"
	Option	"XkbVariant" ",winkeys"
EndSection
...

Any idea anyone?

Thanks a lot guys!
Max

uselpa · 11-09-2006, 03:10 PM

try "pc105" instead of "pc104".

max2004 · 11-10-2006, 05:22 AM

Hi uselpa,

thx for your post. I changed Option "XkbModel" "pc104" to Option "XkbModel" "pc105" in the xorg.conf and set the keyboard model to "Generic 105-key (Intl) PC" in the KDE Control Center. Didn't work though.

What else could I try?
Max

uselpa · 11-10-2006, 02:22 PM

Try something minimalistic, without CoreKeyboard, Options and Variant. Here's mine, for example (for a swiss-french keyboard):

Code:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "kbd"
    Option     "XkbModel"      "pc105"
    Option     "XkbLayout"     "ch"
    Option     "XkbVariant"    "fr"
EndSection

so yours should be

Code:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier  "Keyboard0"
    Driver      "kbd"
    Option     "XkbModel"      "pc105"
    Option     "XkbLayout"     "de"
EndSection

max2004 · 11-11-2006, 09:01 AM

Sweet! It works!
You cannot imagine how good it feels to just press the button for "@" and see it appearing on the screen

Thx again!

max2004 · 11-12-2006, 05:09 AM

Arg!! I just realized something weired: When I do a console login and then startx, they keyboard works. When I do a graphical login to KDE, the keyboard doesn't work (e.g. behaves as described above)!

What could the problem be?

Thanks again,
Max

uselpa · 11-12-2006, 06:43 AM

One possible reason I see is that you have more than one xorg.conf (or any of its other possible names) and that, when X is started from the initscripts, it uses another conf file or another combination of conf files than the one used by a manual startx command.

If you start it manually, you're probably not root, but your init scripts are run by root. So your root user might have a personal .xserverrc that changes the keyboard settings. Try to log in as root and type "startx", does the keyboard work? What if you are another user?

If that doesn't clarify the issue, look for local configuration files, analyse your initscripts and see how X is started in your 'graphical' runlevel, or the brute-force method: as root, type "cd / && grep -R Keyboard * | less". The latter will take some time, though.