I recently (re-)installed Manjaro, and ever since then GDM (the login screen) always uses the US keyboard layout instead of my preferred Colemak layout. I already selected the Colemak layout during the installation process, so it should have carried over to GDM, but didn’t.
I’ve discovered some things (and apparently broken some things, as well) while trying to fix this. I’ll try to list all the fixes/workarounds I tried, but I honestly can’t remember all of them.
Current Configuration
On a multi-user system, there is a “Login Screen” button in the “Region and Language” settings), so I created a 2nd user account to check the “Login Screen” settings, and the keyboard layout that shows up there is “English (Colemak)”.
And this is the current configuration for my user account:
localectl output:
$> localectl
System Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8
LC_COLLATE=C
VC Keymap: colemak
X11 Layout: us
X11 Variant: colemak
In “Region and Language” settings → “Input Sources”, my keyboard layout is set to “English (Colemak)”.
Attempted Fixes
I tried adding a 2nd keyboard layout to my account, in the hope that GDM would display some sort of dropdown to let me switch between the two layouts, but this had no effect.
As per this post, I created the following .desktop file in /usr/local/share/gdm/greeter/autostart:
Once I log into my account, and then go back to the login screen (either by logging out or by hitting Ctrl+Alt+F1), the login screen “adopts” my current keyboard layout. changes its keyboard layout to Colemak. (Will do more testing with other accounts and keyboard layouts when I have time.)
GNOME doesn’t remember any changes made in “Region and Language” → “Login Screen” → “Input Sources”. If I make some changes, then toggle “Login Screen” off and back on, all changes I’ve made are reset. If I close the dialog after making changes, it will remember the changes until I reboot, then reset them again.
Recently, localectl started behaving oddly. Running localectl set-x11-keymap displays an error message, but also applies the changes… for a while:
$> localectl
System Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8
LC_COLLATE=C
VC Keymap: colemak
X11 Layout: us
X11 Variant: colemak
$> localectl set-x11-keymap de
Failed to set keymap: Access denied
$> localectl
System Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8
LC_COLLATE=C
VC Keymap: colemak
X11 Layout: de
And a while later, the changes are magically reset:
$> localectl
System Locale: LANG=en_US.utf8
LC_COLLATE=C
VC Keymap: colemak
X11 Layout: us
X11 Variant: colemak
So at this point I’m really out of ideas. In all the time I’ve spent on this, all I’ve achieved is to make some errors pop up. Would appreciate any input.
I looked at the contents of /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf and it already had the correct settings:
# Written by systemd-localed(8), read by systemd-localed and Xorg. It's
# probably wise not to edit this file manually. Use localectl(1) to
# instruct systemd-localed to update it.
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "system-keyboard"
MatchIsKeyboard "on"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
Option "XkbVariant" "colemak"
EndSection
I also tried running setxkbmap us -variant colemak, but that had no effect. Am I supposed to run that as the gdm user? If so, I don’t know how to do that. I get this error message:
$> sudo -u gdm setxkbmap us -variant colemak
[sudo] password for aran-fey:
Authorization required, but no authorization protocol specified
Cannot open display ":0"
It’s not supposed to be a multi-user system. I only added a 2nd account so that GNOME would display that “Login Screen” button. And like I already said in my original post, the login screen settings
Huh? What’s your problem? I tried everything you told me to and more. What else do you expect from me? If anything, I should be mad at you for suggesting fixes I’ve already tried.
This might be something you have checked already? The correct setting for X11 and wayland seems to differ but the post does not clarify where to set them for wayland.
Thanks, I hadn’t seen that thread before. But to be honest, I’m having a hard time extracting any useful information from it. (The OP there seems to have a problem with their account’s keyboard layout, not the login manager’s.) If there’s something specific you want me to try, or some information you need from me, you may have to dumb it down for me
Here’s some info you may be interested in:
Output of setxkbmap -print -verbose 10:
Setting verbose level to 10
locale is C
Trying to load rules file ./rules/evdev...
Trying to load rules file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev...
Success.
Applied rules from evdev:
rules: evdev
model: pc105
layout: us
Trying to build keymap using the following components:
keycodes: evdev+aliases(qwerty)
types: complete
compat: complete
symbols: pc+us+inet(evdev)
geometry: pc(pc105)
xkb_keymap {
xkb_keycodes { include "evdev+aliases(qwerty)" };
xkb_types { include "complete" };
xkb_compat { include "complete" };
xkb_symbols { include "pc+us+inet(evdev)" };
xkb_geometry { include "pc(pc105)" };
};
Doing echo $XDG_SESSION_TYPE reveals that I’m using Wayland, but as far as I know, X/Wayland is only started after you login, right? So it should have no bearing on what is happening on the login screen.
As for X configuration files:
As already mentioned, /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf contains the correct keyboard layout.
/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/ does not contain any other files.
I tried to see if gnome-control-center produces any output indicating why it won’t save the keyboard layout settings, but there doesn’t seem to be anything useful in there:
$> gnome-control-center -v
18:42:23.0079 diagnostics-cc-panel: DEBUG: ABRT vanished
18:42:23.0095 accountsservice: DEBUG: Finding a graphical session for user 1000
18:42:23.0095 accountsservice: DEBUG: Considering session '3'
18:42:23.0095 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: Seat still actively loading, so not setting loaded property
18:42:23.0124 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: Seat still actively loading, so not setting loaded property
18:42:23.0124 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: Seat loaded, so now setting loaded property
18:42:23.0124 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: user manager now loaded, proceeding with fetch user request for user with id 1000
18:42:23.0124 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: finding user with id 1000 state 2
18:42:23.0124 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: Looking for user with id 1000 in accounts service
18:42:23.0126 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: Found object path of user with id 1000: /org/freedesktop/Accounts/User1000
18:42:23.0126 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: finding user with id 1000 state 3
18:42:23.0126 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: user with id 1000 fetched
18:42:23.0129 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: user aran-fey is now loaded
18:42:23.0129 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: user aran-fey was not yet known, adding it
18:42:23.0129 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: tracking user 'aran-fey'
18:42:23.0129 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: not yet loaded, so not emitting user-added signal
18:42:23.0129 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: no pending users, trying to set loaded property
18:42:23.0129 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: already loaded, so not setting loaded property
18:42:23.0129 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: finished handling request for user with id 1000
18:42:23.0129 accountsservice: DEBUG: ActUserManager: unrefing manager owned by fetch user request
(gnome-control-center:5365): dconf-DEBUG: 18:42:37.215: unwatch_fast: "/system/locale/" (active: 1, establishing: 0)
(gnome-control-center:5365): dconf-DEBUG: 18:42:37.216: unwatch_fast: "/org/gnome/desktop/input-sources/" (active: 1, establishing: 0)
(gnome-control-center:5365): dconf-DEBUG: 18:42:37.220: unwatch_fast: "/org/gnome/control-center/" (active: 1, establishing: 0)
(gnome-control-center:5365): dconf-DEBUG: 18:42:37.221: sync
18:42:37.0221 cc-object-storage: DEBUG: Destroying cached objects
I’ve made a new discovery though: Sometimes gnome-control-center doesn’t list the “English (Colemak)” layout for the login screen. I can’t seem to reproduce it anymore, but two times when I clicked that “Login Screen” button the list of input sources was completely empty.
I’m just reading your post, checking man pages, arch wiki, forums etc. and try to point to possible options that you have not ventured in directly. This thread and your recent reinstall made me think there might be a locale issue, there was an issue with a change in locale on gnome a few releases back. Maybe this tip will help you find the source of the issue.
Oops! Nice catch, I didn’t run locale-gen. Unfortunately, even after running it, there’s no change to GDM’s keyboard layout.
A bit of good news: I figured out what was causing the error with localectl. For some reason the /etc/locale.conf file wasn’t owned by root. I’ve fixed the ownership, and now both localectl and gnome-control-center can successfully change the system keyboard layout. (But of course GDM still doesn’t respect the setting.)
So far i’ve done a bit of searching but I only find the same issue you have and no solutions: 1, 2
Link 2 seems to point to a situation that I might misunderstand and I don’t have non-qwerty keyboard to test this. This might help you in testing out options. It is for a earlier version of GDM.
I’m having the exactly same issue, also with colemak layout.
It’s working everywhere except the initial GDM session (when the user isn’t logged in).
Did you found a solution?
➜ ~ localectl
System Locale: LANG=en_US.UTF-8
VC Keymap: colemak
X11 Layout: us
X11 Model: colemak
➜ ~ cat /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/00-keyboard.conf
# Written by systemd-localed(8), read by systemd-localed and Xorg. It's
# probably wise not to edit this file manually. Use localectl(1) to
# instruct systemd-localed to update it.
Section "InputClass"
Identifier "system-keyboard"
MatchIsKeyboard "on"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
Option "XkbModel" "colemak"
EndSection
dvorak user here with the same problem.
Interesting thing to note: I did an installation with Calamares on my laptop where I set the dvorak layout already in the live sysetm and it worked fine and I had my beloved dvorak layout in GDM when I booted the freshly installed system. The iso to make the live system stick was downloaded maybe a week ago from the manjaro site.
On my main desktop I used manjaro architect which downloaded all the packages freshly from the internet during install. Result is qwerty is GDM. I ran manjaro architect with dvorak layout of course.
So this means there is some change between my life system version of the packages and the newest version, that breaks it.
then this will not help you, and I have no more potential solutions.
yes, where are this guy