Encoding changes on login screen after 'suspend' or screensaver

[Luís Louro]

Binary package hint: gdm

Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description: Ubuntu 9.10
Release: 9.10
Codename: karmic

gdm:
  Instalados: 2.28.1-0ubuntu2.1
  Candidato: 2.28.1-0ubuntu2.1
  Tabla de versión:
 *** 2.28.1-0ubuntu2.1 0
        500 http://es.archive.ubuntu.com karmic-updates/main Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
     2.28.1-0ubuntu1 0
        500 http://es.archive.ubuntu.com karmic/main Packages

3) What you expected to happen
Password would login

4) What happened instead
Password didn't match; can't login.

I'm using karmic on a HP netbook. Anytime I close it (LCD over the keyboard) or if I go away a bit, and it enters 'suspend' (idle/sleep?) mode, the password field when I return wont accept my password. Erroneous encoding is still shown if opening another session. I tried jumping to tty1 and used 'top' to kill gnome screensaver which seems to be running on 2 different processes. Can't understand why, but maybe its my lack of knoledge about it, and it was designed to run twice.
The only workarround i found was to not to kill the process and tell it to login as another user, and still login as the same user anyway. The main trouble here is encoding? Something is triggering a different encoding, locale or keyboard (cant tell which one...) but it may be connected to my spanish keyboard or to having more than one language installed... (this last one seems odd).

ProblemType: Bug
Architecture: i386
Date: Mon Feb 8 19:05:30 2010
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 9.10
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 9.10 "Karmic Koala" - Release i386 (20091028.5)
NonfreeKernelModules: wl
Package: gdm 2.28.1-0ubuntu2.1
ProcEnviron:
 LANG=es_ES.UTF-8
 SHELL=/bin/bash
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 2.6.31-19.56-generic
SourcePackage: gdm
Uname: Linux 2.6.31-19-generic i686

[Marc Deslauriers (mdeslaur)]

Thanks for reporting this. Can you still reproduce this issue with Ubuntu 10.10 (Maverick)?

[Sergey "Shnatsel" Davidoff (shnatsel)]

Yes, it's still an issue in Maverick. I'm experiencing it for several years already... The problem is not in encoding, it's keyboard layout (language?) switch that is not shown by the indicator.

My test case: 2 input languages, English and Russian, indicator (not indicator-applet, the GDM one) shows "USA" or "Рус" respectively.

Steps to reproduce:
1) Switch user
2) Logout from the other user or switch back
3) Observe "USA" layout indication
4) Try entering password; it doesn't match because the layout is Russian actually
5) Press Alt+Shift to change layout
6) Observe the indicator stay at "USA" state
7) Try entering password; it matches.

If I press Alt+Shift more times, changing keyboard layout works properly until the next user switch.
I can't guarantee that it happens always, but in many cases at least. I'm running into it all the time.