lightdm does not keep numlock status on boot

[Nathanel Titane]

when booting or logging out, the numlock status 'on' is not kept for password or pin input via numpad.

ProblemType: Bug
DistroRelease: Ubuntu 11.10
Package: lightdm 0.9.3-0ubuntu8
ProcVersionSignature: Ubuntu 3.0.0-9.14-generic 3.0.3
Uname: Linux 3.0.0-9-generic x86_64
Architecture: amd64
Date: Sat Aug 27 12:22:27 2011
InstallationMedia: Ubuntu 11.04 "Natty Narwhal" - Release amd64 (20110427.1)
SourcePackage: lightdm
UpgradeStatus: Upgraded to oneiric on 2011-08-27 (0 days ago)

[jerrylamos (jerrylamos)]

Last couple new pc's I bought have no indicator for Num Lock and the num pad page up-page down are easier to reach than the PgUp & PgDn (yeah, overkill, tower, notebook, netbook, Android tablet).

With no indicator no problem on Narwhal, stays where it was. Oneiric keeps fiddling around with Num Lock state. Don't do that.

Oneiric should put Num Lock management back where Narwhal had it. If it's not broke, DON'T FIX IT.

Thanks for your attention,

Jerry

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Robert, is that something that would be easy to do for Oneiric? It's a detail but an annoying one ;-)

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

Not sure where the responsibility for this lies. Can anyone confirm which greeter(s) this happens on? I'm wondering if GNOME settings daemon handles this in unity-greeter, and we need something into the GTK greeter to handle this.

[Chris Coulson (chrisccoulson)]

Yes, this is something which gnome-settings-daemon takes care of, but it's disabled in the current version in oneiric (there's a big block of code in gsd-keyboard-manager.c commented out). This recent commit will fix it though:

http://git.gnome.org/browse/gnome-settings-daemon/commit/?id=808640667656668693cedd685f6a830bddc0117d

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

bug #841748 is the g-s-d issue, but as Robert pointed only the unity greeter uses g-s-d so reassigning that bug to lightdm because the gtk greeter will need to do that in some manual way

[studentz (studenz)]

Hi there

This works for me

sudo gedit /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf

add the next line at the end

greeter-setup-script=/usr/bin/numlockx on

I review my xorg.log and I did not found any errors.

[alexduf (dufournetalexandre)]

I would add that LightDm resets the numlock status when choosing your Window Manager.

1-activate numlock
2-choose another WM
3-numlock is now off

Even if activating numlock by default is not possible because of Netbooks, it would be great to have a way to easily choose if numlock is on or off on startup.
I mean, an easier way than installing numlockx and editing a config file as root.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

What greeter do you use? The unity greeter runs gnome-settings-daemon which should store and restore the previous session status for numlock

[anthropornis (anthropornis)]

I am not sure if this is related (or if the affected package is even LightDM), but on my laptop running 11.10 32 bit (clean install, no upgrade), every time I lock the screen and then come back to my laptop the dialog box warns me that the numlock key is on even though it isn't.

My laptop doesn't have a numeric keypad per se, and I really have to go out of my way to engage the numlock (using the Fn key), so I don't use it.

The first time this happened I tried doing the above -- ostensibly to disengage my numlock -- but of course then my password was rejected, because the numlock was never engaged to begin with.

As best I can tell I don't have any screensaver any more, so I don't know if the affected package would be a gnome-screensaver type thing, LightDM, or something else, but I'd be glad to post this where ever it needs to go.

[Mark Alan (malan)]

Same problem here while using Xubuntu 11.10.

The usual tweaks do (briefly) light the numlock led upon login, but then the led goes off and numlock stays off.

By 'usual tweaks' I mean:
1. sudo apt-get install numlockx
2. followed by:

either:
  (cd ~/.config/autostart;ln -s $(which numlockx))

or:
  printf "[Desktop Entry]\nVersion=1.0\nType=Application\nName=numlockx\nExec=/usr/bin/numlockx\nStartupNotify=false\nTerminal=false\nHidden=false\n" > "$HOME/.config/autostart/numlockx.desktop"

[Nicolas Delvaux (malizor)]

Still the same problem on Precise.

[Kev Bowring (flocculant)]

following todays lightdm update - the workround to get numlock at login screen fails

[Gunnar Hjalmarsson (gunnarhj)]

On 2015-06-17 18:53, flocculant wrote:
> following todays lightdm update - the workround to get numlock at
> login screen fails

Please see this Ubuntu documentation page:

https://help.ubuntu.com/stable/ubuntu-help/numeric-keypad.html

The method suggested there works fine for me both on an updated vivid (with latest lightdm) and an updated wily.

[Kev Bowring (flocculant)]

that workround appears to be working here