Login screen randomly reverts my default keyboard layout to en-US

[Olivier Tilloy]

I have seen that happening randomly during the 20.04 development cycle, and I think more often in the last week or so, but never consistently: when I turn on my laptop, on the GDM greeter screen the keyboard layout that's selected is en-US, instead of my default preference (fr-bépo).

To give an example of the randomness, this is what I did this morning:
 1) Cold booted my laptop, selected my user, typed my password, login got denied, looked at the keyboard layout indicator and realized it was en-US instead of fr-bépo
 2) Selected fr-bépo in the indicator, typed my password again and successfully logged in (and indicator in the session remained fr-bépo as expected)
 3) From the menu, rebooted laptop
 4) On the GDM login screen, keyboard layout indicator was reverted to en-US, again
 5) Changed indicator to fr-bépo, logged in, used gnome-terminal and apt to dist-upgrade, then rebooted laptop from menu
 6) This time on the GDM login screen, my default preference (fr-bépo) was selected

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 20.04
Package: gdm3 3.34.1-1ubuntu1
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 5.4.0-18.22-generic 5.4.24
Uname: Linux 5.4.0-18-generic x86_64
NonfreeKernelModules: zfs zunicode zavl icp zcommon znvpair
ApportVersion: 2.20.11-0ubuntu21
Architecture: amd64
CurrentDesktop: ubuntu:GNOME
Date: Tue Mar 31 07:16:14 2020
EcryptfsInUse: Yes
InstallationDate: Installed on 2016-07-02 (1367 days ago)
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 16.04 LTS "Xenial Xerus" - Release amd64 (20160420.1)
SourcePackage: gdm3
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to focal on 2020-01-12 (78 days ago)

[Daniel van Vugt (vanvugt)]

The GUI and input is handled by the gnome-shell process. Although the root cause of this bug might be in mutter, ibus or elsewhere.

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

This looks similar to https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gdm/-/issues/462, although that upstream bug seems to imply the problem happens systematically, whereas in my case it's random.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Could you report it upstream Olivier?

[Olivier Tilloy (osomon)]

Done, here is the upstream bug: https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-shell/-/issues/2543.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Seems annoying but we are rls-ff-notfixing for now since there is only one report, we will revisit if other users hit the problem though

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.