XKBVARIANT setting in /etc/default/keyboard not respected

[Luzius Thöny]

After upgrading to the pre-release version of Ubuntu 20.10 (groovy) today, I noticed that the setting for XKBVARIANT in /etc/default/keyboard is not respected anymore. In my case, I have set XKBVARIANT="altgr-gmc" in that file, but the variant is not loaded after a fresh boot:

lou@onyx:~$ setxkbmap -query
rules: evdev
model: pc105
layout: us

If I load the variant manually, then it works:

lou@onyx:~$ setxkbmap us -variant altgr-gmc
lou@onyx:~$ setxkbmap -query
rules: evdev
model: pc105
layout: us
variant: altgr-gmc

But this lasts only until the next reboot.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.10
Package: console-setup 1.195ubuntu2
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.8.0-23.24-generic 5.8.14
Uname: Linux 5.8.0-23-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: nvidia_modeset nvidia
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu50
Architecture: amd64
CasperMD5CheckResult: skip
CurrentDesktop: XFCE
Date: Sat Oct 17 16:58:13 2020
InstallationDate: Installed on 2019-06-30 (475 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Xubuntu 19.10 "Eoan Ermine" - Alpha amd64 (20190630)
PackageArchitecture: all
SourcePackage: console-setup
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to groovy on 2020-10-17 (0 days ago)

[Luzius Thöny (lucius-antonius)]

I have confirmed this issue today on a fresh install of groovy. So it is not an upgrade issue.

A workaround is to put the setxkbmap command into a bash script and have it run on session startup.