fedora-list redhat com

[Peter Rounce]

This thread seems to have been started back on 24 Sept 2008 when  
Marcelo M. Garcia wrote:

    > During the installation of Fedora 10 I choose UK for the keyboard
    > layout, but I when I log in gnome is using American layout.

    > If I add the UK in System->Preferences->Hardware->Keyboard it seems to
    > not make difference. I make it the default, but again, the layout is
    > american.


I have only seen replies to this in Feb 09, that centre on modifying  
xorg.conf.

I have installed Fedora 10 this week and suffered the problem of 
specifying a UK keyboard
during installation but actually got a USA keyboard layout.
Looking at the Xorg.0.log file showed that the xorg configwas 
considering a GB keyboard:-

II) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Found keys
(II) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Configuring as keyboard
(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard" 
(type: KEYBOARD)
(**) Option "xkb_rules" "evdev"
(**) Option "xkb_model" "pc105"
(**) Option "xkb_layout" "gb"
(II) config/hal: Adding input device PS/2 Generic Mouse

but that later a "us" keyboard was also being added,

(II) XINPUT: Adding extended input device "Power Button (FF)" (type: 
KEYBOARD)
(**) Option "xkb_rules" "evdev"
(**) Option "xkb_model" "evdev"
(**) Option "xkb_layout" "us"
(EE) Error loading keymap /var/lib/xkb/server-0.xkm
(II) AT Translated Set 2 keyboard: Close

The error condition rose as the installation placed no xkm files in my 
/var/lib/xkb directory
.
Since Fedora 10 probes the hardware to set up the keyboard,  mouse and 
screen and doesn't
rely on or install a xorg.conf, I didn't want to set up an "xorg.conf" 
file, and other replies in this thread suggested,
so I played with the Keyboard Preferencestool 
(System->Preferences->Hardware-Keyboard), in particular the layouts tab.
[Note: Despite the install selection of a GB keyboard, this tool only 
showed a USA keyboard as being available.]

This wasn't a particularly gratifying experience:-
1) the help page seems to be out of date, so it wasn't clear how to 
operate the tool;
2) the "Type to test settings" box seemed to indicate that none of the 
keyboard choices I made had any effect.

However, the help page did offer a useful suggestion which was to 
install a "keyboard indicator panel applet" on my main applet panel:
right click on applet panel and click on "Add to Panel".
This allowed me to see what keyboard is  current at any particular 
instance, andto resolve by keyboard problem.

My solution was to select in the "Keyboard Model" selector of the 
Keyboard Preferences tool
    "Generic 105-key (Intl) PC
Then to add a United Kingdom keyboard to the "Selected layouts" panel:
click on the +Add button and then on the "By country" tab select Country 
as United Kingdom
and select "United Kingdom" as the variant.

Once I had saved these, the keyboard indicator (switcher) on the applet 
panel allowed me to switch between
USA and GBr keyboard and to see which was active in each window, and to 
see that I could at last get a GB keyboard.

Finally, I went back to the Keyboard Preferences layout panel and 
removed the USA keyboard entry,
so that the Keyboard Indicator (Switcher) is no longer necessary. 
Rebooting the machine
has shown that the GB keyboard selection is maintained across a least 1 
reboot.

Hopefully this will be useful to others who will inevitably come across 
this problem.

Peter Rounce