It appears that the kdm chooser in 9.1 defaults to run with QWERTZ and not
QWERTY, even though the system was set to (and defaulted to) US keyboard
during installation.  That caused me to troubleshoot for quite some time, as
I could log in from a console just fine, but not from the kdm chooser.
There was a z in the password but not the username, so I could type the
username fine, and since the password is replaced with asterisks, there was
no way to see that the z I typed got translated to a y.  The problem was
discovered by sheer accident, when I mistyped my username as zrt instead of
art, and saw "yrt" on the screen!

My guess is that this will only happen on machines where sax2 won't run, and
thus XFree86 falls back to default settings.  And even on non-German
versions where all the other defaults are non-German, XFree86 defaults to
German...

Anyhow, since sax2 won't run (or crashes) on a fair number of machines, I'm
sure that others will run into the same problem.  The fix is to edit
/etc/X11/XF86config, and change the keyboard to 104 keys "us" instead of 105
keys "de".  Follow up by a logout or CTRL-ALT-BS, and things should work ok.

And SaX2 must die.

Regards,
--
*Art

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Arthur Hagen wrote:
> It appears that the kdm chooser in 9.1 defaults to run with QWERTZ and not
> QWERTY, even though the system was set to (and defaulted to) US keyboard
> during installation.  That caused me to troubleshoot for quite some time, 
as
> I could log in from a console just fine, but not from the kdm chooser.
> There was a z in the password but not the username, so I could type the
> username fine, and since the password is replaced with asterisks, there wa
s
> no way to see that the z I typed got translated to a y.  The problem was
> discovered by sheer accident, when I mistyped my username as zrt instead o
f
> art, and saw "yrt" on the screen!
>
> My guess is that this will only happen on machines where sax2 won't run, a
nd
> thus XFree86 falls back to default settings.  And even on non-German
> versions where all the other defaults are non-German, XFree86 defaults to
> German...
>
> Anyhow, since sax2 won't run (or crashes) on a fair number of machines, I'
m
> sure that others will run into the same problem.  The fix is to edit
> /etc/X11/XF86config, and change the keyboard to 104 keys "us" instead of 1
05
> keys "de".  Follow up by a logout or CTRL-ALT-BS, and things should work o
k.
>
> And SaX2 must die.
>
> Regards,

I have 104 and US but I have trouble with the ' or " I have to add a
space bar after the ' or " or they don't appear.  Any ideas as to why?
John

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

On Sun, 25 Jul 2004 01:14:22 -0400
"Arthur Hagen" <art@broomstick.com> wrote:

> And SaX2 must die.

SaX2 is a good idea for newbies in most situations. I prefer using
xf86config and then hand-editting the resultant file, but that's
intimidating for new users.

My box is one of those that SaX2 screws up -- whenever I run it, I
*have* to hand-edit the XF86Config file since it picks freqs too low for
my monitor (or remember that I can change it in sax before I leave it).
And yes, I *still* haven't gotten around to editting the monitor
database to correct the settings for my monitor -- but I sent the
settings to SUSE after a big fiasco with my 7.1 install and thought they
could have changed it by *now*! :-)


--
Kevin Nathan (Montana, USA)
Open standards. Open source. Open minds.
The command line is the front line.

Linux 2.4.20-4GB-athlon
1:08am  up 6 days  8:00,  8 users,  load average: 1.27, 0.81, 0.48

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

John Fabiani wrote:
> I have 104 and US but I have trouble with the ' or " I have to add a
> space bar after the ' or " or they don't appear.  Any ideas as to why?
> John

That's caused by the US international keyboard layout. Some keys become
"dead" keys, which enable you to type ä and ñ by first typing the
diacritic sign and then the character itself. Very handy, except for the
fact that you have to type a space to get a " or ' or ~ (etc).
Under Windows I have just defined 2 keybourd layouts, one standard US
(which behaves normally, but is difficult if you want to type an ä), and
one US international. I can switch between the layouts by pressing
Ctlr-Shift. Haven't found a way to do the same under Linux.

Joost

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

John Fabiani <jfabiani@yolo.com> wrote:
>
> I have 104 and US but I have trouble with the ' or " I have to add a
> space bar after the ' or " or they don't appear.  Any ideas as to why?

You have 104 (Int'l) and not 104 selected.  Check the XF86Config file(s) and
the KDE/Gnome/whatever specific settings too.

The international US keyboard support in Linux is, unfortunately, a really
bad implementation which doesn't support double dead keys and is
incompatible with anything else.
I'd much prefer the good old X11 method with AltGr+A ' for an accented A,
AltGr+l b for a pound sign, et cetera.  Unfortunately, I haven't found a way
to get this enabled under XFree86.

Regards,
--
*Art

[ Post a follow-up to this message ]

Arthur Hagen wrote:
> John Fabiani <jfabiani@yolo.com> wrote:
> 
>
>
> You have 104 (Int'l) and not 104 selected.  Check the XF86Config file(s) a
nd
> the KDE/Gnome/whatever specific settings too.
>
> The international US keyboard support in Linux is, unfortunately, a really
> bad implementation which doesn't support double dead keys and is
> incompatible with anything else.
> I'd much prefer the good old X11 method with AltGr+A ' for an accented A,
> AltGr+l b for a pound sign, et cetera.  Unfortunately, I haven't found a w
ay
> to get this enabled under XFree86.
>
> Regards,

Thanks I turned off the keyboard layout and that fixed it.
John

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