Screensaver password dialog does not indicate keyboard layout

[Adam Lindberg]

The screensaver password dialog, that is produced whenever you want to resume your work after a screensaver (or hibernate etc), does not indicate which keyboard layout is active. As I use several ones at the same time, I find it hard to know which layout is supposed to be active in GDM, and often I don't even remember which one I used last. There is no way of finding out the layout as the only thing showing is black dots in the input field.

This "bug" have made me loose work due to that I cannot enter my password at times, even though I thought I correctly guessed different layouts. I do run two different types of Dvorak on my Qwerty keyboard, so it is not easy to guess.

Proposal:
* At least a keyboard indicator and switcher as can be seen in Gnome Panel should be present in the password dialog.
* Possibly also a field where one can test a layout (but not in the dialog itself, perhaps as a button) to see if it is the one expected.

Note: the original reporter indicated the bug was in package 'gdm2'; however, that package was not published in Ubuntu.

[William Grant (wgrant)]

I have struck this problem as well... It'd be nice to have some indication.

[Adam Lindberg (eproxus)]

May be marked as wishlist, but I think it should be more severe. It has led to information loss for me.

[Nick Demou (ndemou)]

Adam wrote:
> It has led to information loss for me.

Well in my case it has led to hardware loss. I know you are laughing. It's OK. Now let's get serious, here is my situation:

1) English is not my primary language as is the case of so many people
2) At my office I always have a locking-screensaver set to 5mins for security reasons. Quite resonable I think.
So every day I will need to unlock the screensaver at least 5 to 10 times. Many times I will type my password and it will fail because I am in the wrong keyb layout. At least every day or two something like this happens:
I get a phone call so I return to my office because I need my PC to help the caller. I type my password anxious to restore my desktop. The computer waits a little then complains that it is wrong. I say "I should have typed slowly - I probably misstyped". I type it again slowly. The computer waits a little then complains. Argh... I say "damn it was the wrong layout". I hit ctlr-alt and think I changed it but I only wake up the screensaver again. I type it once more. It waits then it complains. Then I say "damn I probably misstyped". I type it again slowly. It waits... then it complains. I finaly realise I didn't switch layout. I hit a key to wake the PC then I switch the layout then I type my password fast because I've lost my patience. It fails... now you know why I am writing this in my brand new keyboard... the 2nd in one week :-)

as for possible resolutions of this bug:
--------------------------------------------------
if it is very difficult to have a keyboard indicator and switcher in the password dialog then at least the keyborad should be set to the default layout. So the user only needs to select a password using the default keyb layout.

[Adam Lindberg (eproxus)]

For me it has even been like that that I was completely sure that I wrote the correct passwords for both my layouts since I know them quite well. Still no luck. Hard to know which layout is really used, could be some obscure X configuration even for all I know.

[Konstantinos Togias (ktogias)]

I suffer from this issue too on Dapper. My native language is Greek. I use two layouts en_US and el_GR and switch bettween them with ctrl+alt+shift.
I have selected en_US layout as the default layout and clicked the "separate group for each window".
This way when I start an application it's window uses the default layout.

Unfortunatelly I realized that xlock and the window shown when an app needs my password to get root priviledges (eg. /usr/bin/sudo -H -S -p GNOME_SUDO_PASS -u root -- /usr/bin/update-manager) , do not follow this rule (they do not switch to the default layout when they appear at the screen).
I think this happens because when xlock or sudo window start, the focus is not taken from the previously focused window. This results in xlock and sudo using the layout selected for that window and not the default.

This issue is very very annoying for users that use more than one layout (and all non English speakers) and thus I think it should be take a highter priority.

I think the most appropriate sollution to this is to make xlock and sudo take the focus from the previously focused window and thus switch to the default layout.

An other approximation would be to show a message under or next to the password input box that would indicate the current layout.

[Simos Xenitellis  (simosx)]

I added upstream bug reports to the gnome-screensaver and gswitchit packages from GNOME.

I think that Sergey (Keyboard Indicator) should be of great help for this one.

[Simos Xenitellis  (simosx)]

The proper upstream bug report (older than the one I just reported) is at
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=327056

I updated the link on the top of this page to reflect the change.

[Jenda Vančura (jenda)]

I think my problem is very related:
I use a modified dvorak keyboard (as a non-english speaker) to avoid keyboard switching (with xmodmap). My password uses the same keys on both that and the default dvorak layout, which is the system default.
However, when the screen locks, it refuses to let me back in no matter what I try. I consider this a very serious bug.

I can confirm the bug directly too - when I have someone else using my PC, I need to xmodmap to their layout... but when the screen locks, we have a problem: I know the password, they know the layout. Hard-rebooting.

[Jenda Vančura (jenda)]

Update to the above: A different user on the same computer with standard keyboard settings has the problem too. No way the pass can be entered.
And just to correct myself: Ctrl+Alt+Bcksp works better than a hard reboot... but is just as bad, IMO.

[era (era)]

Simos: When you run sudo, won't the keyboard preference need to be set for the root user as well in order to work as you wish?

[Oliver Grawert (ogra)]

gnome-screensaver has this feature since some time in feisty now

[Roberto (roberto-rondanelli)]

I had the same issue of being unable to unlock the screensaver in Fedora Core 6. After reading this thread I realized that I could login by switching the keyboard layout with Alt-Shift. Before this I didn't have any clue on what was going on.

[axx (axx)]

This is active again in Lucid Lynx beta: the screensaver unlock dialog doesn't have an indication of what layout is in use, nor does it offer to switch. It just uses the last used layout.

If it is of any importance, I'm using different layouts for the same language, in this case French bepo as default and French Alternative as secondary option.

[Adam Lindberg (eproxus)]

I can see the layout name and click on it to switch. It's to the right of the password text box.

[axx (axx)]

After a bit more research, it appears that it was the theme I had applied in the past to the gnome-screensaver unlock dialog that wasn't working fully with Lucid Lynx.

Should I report this as a seperate bug, or do we consider that new versions aren't required to work with old themes?