Keyboard layout not set in greeter

[Jonathan D'Orleans]

Hello Guys,

I had installed LightDM in my Ubuntu 11.04 yesterday.
However, I got some weird behaviour with my keyboard preferences (layout) after install it.
Every time I reboot or logout my system the keyboard layout change to USA automatically.

I have searched about this problem at google, but I got nothing except with xorg.conf stuffs.
The problem is I have no xorg.conf with this Ubuntu version to configure manually.
(Keep in mind I was tried to change my keyboard preferences through the GUI program, but the problem persist)

At this time, I removed LightDM and I using GDM again.

So, have you guys any idea to fix it?

Thx in advanced,

[Jonathan D'Orleans (jonathan.dorleans)]

I fixed it.
I have verified these files:

/etc/default/locale (OK)
/etc/default/keyboard (OK)
$HOME/.dmrc (Problem)

and

Alt + F2 : gconf-editor
/desktop/gnome/peripherals/keyboard/kbd

So, the problem was in $HOME/.dmrc file.

I don't know why, but the Layout field was changed to EN automatically (Layout=en).
It's because my system was configuring a new keyboard layout to USA after every reboot/logout.

[z3z (z3z)]

This problem affected me too. I use UK keyboard layout, and when I restarted, I always got switched back to US layout. A keyboard preferences icon would appear on the top panel, so it was easy to change, but it never seemed to stick. I also tried removing the US keyboard, but whenever I restarted it was back again.

Jonathan, your fix worked for me too. the problem seems to be with the .dmrc file. Mine showed "Layout=us", however when I manually changed it to "Layout=gb", saved the file and restarted, this made the change stick.

[Marius Kruger (amanica)]

I'd like LightDM to allow switching the keyboard layout at the login screan like gdm and kdm does now.
Should I log a bug for that?

[Robert Ancell (robert-ancell)]

The keyboard switcher was disabled as it was causing problems. It should be fixed.

[Saša Janiška (gour)]

Hiya,

I also had problem with keyboard layout being messed after login with lightdm (with lxdm it works OK) and wonder whether this bug is the same as http://fossplanet.com/f10/%5Bbug-779891%5D-%5Bnew%5D-wrong-keyboard-lyout-after-login-lightdm-161750/ ?

Sincerely,
Gour

[Saša Janiška (gour)]

Tried with 1.0.5, but LightDm still does not honour my locale settings, iow, with lxdm I have:

LANG=en_US.UTF-8
LC_CTYPE=en_US.UTF-8
LC_NUMERIC=hr_HR.UTF-8
LC_TIME=hr_HR.UTF-8
LC_COLLATE=hr_HR.UTF-8
LC_MONETARY=hr_HR.UTF-8
LC_MESSAGES=en_US.UTF-8
LC_PAPER=hr_HR.UTF-8
LC_NAME=hr_HR.UTF-8
LC_ADDRESS=hr_HR.UTF-8
LC_TELEPHONE=hr_HR.UTF-8
LC_MEASUREMENT=hr_HR.UTF-8
LC_IDENTIFICATION=hr_HR.UTF-8
LC_ALL=

while after login via lightdm I get:

LANG=
LC_CTYPE=
LC_NUMERIC="POSIX"
LC_TIME="POSIX"
LC_COLLATE="POSIX"
LC_MONETARY="POSIX"
LC_MESSAGES="POSIX"
LC_PAPER="POSIX"
LC_NAME="POSIX"
LC_ADDRESS="POSIX"
LC_TELEPHONE="POSIX"
LC_MEASUREMENT="POSIX"
LC_IDENTIFICATION="POSIX"
LC_ALL=

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[AO (aofrl10n)]

Precise amd64 Alpha 1.
I am now experiencing this on a system with locale fr_CA.UTF-8, lightdm defaults to an USA keyboard layout.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

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

[Jan Simon (jan-simon)]

Some additional information:
On a german keyboard the z and y keys are switched compared to an english keyboard. I have this bug on one my machines as well, and as my user password contains a "z" i always have to press the "y" button on my keyboard. In /etc/keyboard XKBLAYOUT is set to "en", i switched it to "de" and now it works like expected.
On my other machine i don't have this problem, the difference between the two is, that i've installed on the first machine (with the layout problem) 10.10 and then upgraded to 11.04 and 11.10. On my second machine i've installed 11.04 and upgraded to 11.10.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

This bug was fixed in the package unity-greeter - 0.2.0-0ubuntu1

---------------
unity-greeter (0.2.0-0ubuntu1) precise; urgency=low

  * New upstream release
    - Improve scrolling animation (LP: #844050)
    - Select menubar when F10 is pressed
    - Fix Orca not starting when enabling screen reader (LP: #850554)
    - Add a keyboard indicator (LP: #783827, LP: #834487)
    - Always focus new windows
    - Check version of Vala when compiling
    - Update logo for 12.04 (LP: #892394)
    - Use default invisible character in password dialog (LP: #834878)
    - Darken indicator bar
    - User smaller grid size
    - Put end-stops on user list scrolling
    - Only fade out user labels that can't fit in completely (LP: #883260)
    - Center dots (LP: #872800)
    - Add translator comments (LP: #855385)
    - Add option to disable dots (LP: #883908)
    - Only redraw parts of the screen that have changed
    - Don't run the greeter if can't connect to daemon and not in test mode
      (LP: #876754)
 -- Robert Ancell <email address hidden> Thu, 19 Jan 2012 14:56:21 +1100

[Didier Roche-Tolomelli (didrocks)]

This seems to have not worked on 0.2.0-0ubuntu1, a lot of people reported "impossible to log in", when in reality, the keyboard was reverted to USA.

In addition, the French default keyboard we use in ubuntu: French (alternative) is not proposed in the indicator-keyboard dropdown, maybe that's part of the issue?

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

This introduced a huge regression: As the indicator does not automatically adapt to the selected user's default layout, but apparently stays to the system default (or always just en/US, I didn't test that far), lightdm now _overwrites_ the user's default layout with the one which is set in the lightdm indicator (which is wrong).

Before, lightdm would not touch the keyboard layout at all. This was not really nice because users could not type their password in their own layout, but had to use the system default layout.

The old gdm 2 did it right: It switched the current keyboard layout to the user default one, you were able to change it when typing your password, and it propagated the new default layout to the session. I think the unity greeter shoudl reflect this.

[Martin Pitt (pitti)]

Didier: The missing alternative keyboard layout is certainly a bug, but not the cause for this one: For testing I created a new user, and switched it to "German" in the indicator, then verified that it had German layout in the session (also in control-center). Logged out, back to lightdm, selected "test", indicator stayed at "en", logged in, got an US layout instead of German.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

the wrong layout is being tracked in bug #915468, closing the current bug again