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delgado

Member

Registered: 2022-07-14

Posts: 212  

[SOLVED] How to set keyboard layout in a remote X session?

Hi,

when I'm at home, having a wire guard vpn connection to the company, via remote-desktop to xrdp (virtual session, not screen mirror): The keyboard layout switches to 'en_US'.

The reason is unknown, this does not happen when the connection comes form a local machine. Anyway.

I used to have a German keyboard, anything else is English / en_GB.
To switch back to the layout:

$ setxkbmap -layout "de" -nodeadkeys   # same with or without 'nodeadkeys'

This works not 100%. The [Altgr] key stays dead, which means none of {[]}\| .

What am I missing? Or
How to get the [Altgr] key working?

Thanks and regards.

delgado

Member

Registered: 2022-07-14

Posts: 212  

Re: [SOLVED] How to set keyboard layout in a remote X session?

Update:
The original post was not very precise: xrdp is the problem.
And I found a somewhat dirty hack to fix the keyboard layout.

The loaded keymap is:

sudo cat /var/log/xrdp.log | grep km-000 | tail -1
[20230106-12:31:06] [INFO ] Loading keymap file /etc/xrdp/km-00000409.ini

Which is "us". "de" is "km-00000407.ini".
Backup and copy:

sudo gzip /etc/xrdp/km-00000409.ini
sudo cp /etc/xrdp/km-00000407.ini /etc/xrdp/km-00000409.ini

After logging in, it is still a "us" keymap, but switching to "de" now works

setxkbmap de

Would prefer a cleaner solution, but at least it works by now.

Edit: Will mark it as solved. And look for another remote X session solution.

Last edited by delgado (2023-01-06 12:25:09)

guuml.dev1

Member

Registered: 2018-12-09

Posts: 21  

Re: [SOLVED] How to set keyboard layout in a remote X session?

…  And look for another remote X session solution.

Some weeks ago I have read in setxkbmap(1):

USING WITH xkbcomp
If you have an Xserver and a client shell running on different
computers and some XKB configuration files on those machines are
different, you can get problems specifying a keyboard map by model,
layout, and options names. …

For example, the command …

      setxkbmap us -print | xkbcomp - $DISPLAY

makes both steps run on the same (client) machine and loads a keyboard
map into the server.

Note the "us" difference to an example setting with de_DE.UTF-8:

$ setxkbmap -print
xkb_keymap {
	xkb_keycodes  { include "evdev+aliases(qwertz)"	};
	xkb_types     { include "complete"	};
	xkb_compat    { include "complete"	};
	xkb_symbols   { include "pc+de(nodeadkeys)+inet(evdev)"	};
	xkb_geometry  { include "pc(pc105)"	};
};

Using the command

setxkbmap de nodeadkeys -print | xkbcomp - $DISPLAY

should provide a german keyboard (with no deadkeys) to the server.

---

guuml is an abbrevation for gü in ASCII (1967),
focused on devuan and skipping epic poems like beowulf.
Has Gü spent his last raw DVD to a chimäre? No.

delgado

Member

Registered: 2022-07-14

Posts: 212  

Re: [SOLVED] How to set keyboard layout in a remote X session?

@guuml.dev1: Thanks for the reply (yes, long ago). There are "ä,ö,ü,ß". [AltGr] is onyl working, if xrdp uses an appropriate keymap too.

Update - a cleaner way to set a default keymap for xrdp:
Initially loaded is /etc/xrdp/km-00000000.ini. The file is not existing, so a link or copy can be made without interfering the installation. The issue occurred again on a new PC.
In my case:

$ sudo cp -a /etc/xrdp/km-00000407.ini /etc/xrdp/km-00000000.ini

After logging in, it is still a "us" or "en" keymap, but switching to "de" now fully works.

$ setxkbmap de