keyboard input broken due to invalid keyboard variant set by VMWare installer
Affects | Status | Importance | Assigned to | Milestone | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
xorg-server (Ubuntu) |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Chris Halse Rogers | ||
Lucid |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Martin Pitt | ||
Maverick |
Fix Released
|
Medium
|
Chris Halse Rogers |
Bug Description
[Problem]
/etc/default/
[Workaround]
For affected machines, run: sudo dpkg-reconfigure console-setup
[Impact]
Due to console-setup using invalid keyboard model and layout identifiers on certain (common) hardware, this can break the keyboard functionality in certain circumstances. For example, the vmware installer copies these invalid values and propagates them in a way that causes them to become the X defaults, thus confusing X and leaving the keyboard improperly set up.
[Development]
The fix has been committed to the main ubuntu-x git branch, which will be used once Maverick Meerkat is open for development, thus this fix will automatically copy over into it.
[Patch]
The xkb rules are modified to simply ignore the invalid values XKBMODEL="SKIP" and XKBLAYOUT="U.S. English" and use the default -evdev settings.
[Test Case]
1. Set XKBMODEL="SKIP" and/or XKBLAYOUT="U.S. English" in /etc/default/
2. Install vmware
3. Reboot. When login box appears, verify password can be typed in properly
[Regression Potential]
Negligible. These days there are hardly any systems which aren't going to work fine with the default evdev settings, and anyway those cases would neither work with "SKIP" or "U.S. English" either.
[Original Report]
VMWare Player 3.0.1 build-227600
Host OS: Windows XP
Guest OS: Ubuntu 10.04 Beta, Kernel 2.6.32-17-generic
After installing a slew of Ubuntu updates on 3/26/2010 keyboard input at the gnome login prompt no longer works. The mouse does work and I am able to use the 'on-screen keyboard' accessibility tool to input my password and gain entry. After logging in, there does not seem to be any problems using the keyboard, I experience the problem only at the gnome login screen.
I suspected that after updating that possibly some of the vmware drivers may not be working correctly, so I ran vmware-
I've attached the portion of the apt history.log showing the packages that were applied during the update.
Related branches
affects: | ubuntu → gdm (Ubuntu) |
Changed in gdm (Ubuntu): | |
assignee: | Canonical Desktop Team (canonical-desktop-team) → Martin Pitt (pitti) |
summary: |
- keyboard input broken at gnome login prompt after package updates + keyboard input broken due to invalid "SKIP" keyboard model |
Changed in console-setup (Ubuntu): | |
status: | New → Confirmed |
Changed in xserver-xorg-input-evdev (Ubuntu Lucid): | |
status: | Confirmed → In Progress |
description: | updated |
Changed in xorg-server (Ubuntu Maverick): | |
status: | Fix Committed → Fix Released |
To clarify a point, I ran vmware- config- tools.pl to recompile/reinstall the vmware drivers in the Ubuntu 10.04 beta guest OS. This completed successfully, but it did not resolve the problem.