Some time ago I updated a machine running Mandriva 2008.1 to 2009.1. It used to have multiple keyboard layouts set up, but since the upgrade to KDE4 layout defaults to US-english and there appears no way to change it. The problem I'm facing is that in the KDE4's setting manager ('systemsettings') there are no keyboard types, layouts or anything else to choose from. All related GUI widgets (drop down lists, etc.) are just empty. Everything works perfectly fine under KDE3 settings though.

There were some dependency conflicts I had to solve during the update, so it's quite possible I had screwed something up. My guess is the module used for kde4 keyboard layout settings doesn't know where to look for different layouts, but as of yet I haven't had any luck finding where this is configured...

Any ideas on what might have gone awry or whether I'm missing something obvious?

Have you checked under the 'Regional & Language' section of the 'System Settings'? That is where you set up different keyboards. Not under the 'Keyboard & Mouse' section where you might think keyboard layouts are kept.

I looked in the right place, but the problem turned out to be with the VNC server on that machine. For some reason it never started up xkb...

Thanks for the reply, though!