[Pkg-utopia-maintainers] Xorg hotplugging problems [WAS: Re: Bug#442316: xserver-xorg-input-evdev: evdev from experimental messes up my keyboard layout]

[Michael Biebl]

Julien Cristau schrieb:
> On Sat, Sep 15, 2007 at 02:15:52 +0200, Michael Biebl wrote:
> 
>> Package: xserver-xorg-input-evdev
>> Version: 1:1.2.0~git20070819-2
>> Severity: important
>>
>> As you can see from the xorg.conf, I set up a German keyboard layout.
>> After installing evdev from experimental I lost my German
>> keyboard layout (I guess its english, y is z e.g.). 
>> Also, my special keys like alt+f1 dont work anymore.
>>
> Hrm.  I'm not sure why evdev is even loaded.  Did you enable input
> hotplug via hal?

You were right, Julien. It was because of hal (specifically the file
/usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-x11-input.fdi) that the evdev
driver was enabled.

Whenever xorg input hotplugging kicks in, the evdev driver is used. The
kbd keyboard settings from xorg.conf are ignored and the en_US keyboard
layout is used.
Unfortunately, the evdev driver seems to lack functionality, e.g. my
multimedia keys don't work anymore, also, very important, STRG+ALT+F1 is
non-functional (maybe this is just a misconfiguration, I don't know. At
least the default configuration seems to lack this functionality).

It gets even worse, if you try to apply a pc105 keyboard layout over
evdev (which can happen if you use GNOMEs/KDEs keyboard selector). Then
you not only have missing keys but also some keys are mis-mapped. E.g.
the UP key is mapped to PRINT [1]. This really makes it hard to navigate.

Since the latest upgrade of hal to 0.5.10, the above fdi file is shipped
by default in hal. So several users have already encountered this
problem (debian bug #447666, #447676).

The question now is, how we proceed from here.
I CCed Daniel Stone, maybe he can give us some input on how to solve
this, and how we can get xorg hotplugging work correctly.

If I understood Daniel correctly, he proposes to set the keyboard layout
(probably based on the values from xorg.conf) via a generated fdi file.
I'd like to avoid that, because that would complicate things.
Preferably, the X server should use the keyboard layout specified in
xorg.conf (for the old kbd driver) even when used in xorg hotplugging mode.

For the second part (DEs applying a pc105 keyboard layout over evdev) I
can't think of a proper solution right now. All I can say is, that I
would prefer, if we don't break working setups.

In case we can't fix the above issues in a reasonable time frame, I will
consider to remove /usr/share/hal/fdi/policy/10osvendor/10-x11-input.fdi
from hal again, at least temporarily.

If you say, that this is soon fixable, I would at least raise the
severity of the hal bug  #447666 to critical, so users of testing will
not be affected by this.

Feedback and comments welcome,

Michael



[1] http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg/2007-October/029202.html

-- 
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universe are pointed away from Earth?

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