No keyboard previews

In "System" -> "Preferences" -> "Keyboard Preferences", "Layout" tab, "+Add" button (brings up the dialog)... the frame labeled "Preview" never shows the currently selected keyboard. Everytime a keyboard is selected, stderr gets "** (gnome-keyboard-properties:8918): CRITICAL **: XkbGetKeyboard failed to get keyboard from the server!"

It is not a control-center bug, it is something broken in xlib, XkbGetKeyboard returns NULL

Right and it's fixed upstream

If you don't mind, could you please give a hint where was breakage - because people keep asking me (since I am g-k-p maintainer) and I would like to have an answer...

Thank you Sergey and didier

Patch used by the current fedora package. The upstream commit corresponding seems to be http://lists.freedesktop.org/archives/xorg-commit/2006-July/008488.html

Is this patch going to be applied in eft? The huge empty dialog in gnome-keyboard-properties looks very ugly.

no, edgy is stable now and that patch is not trivial so probably not a candidate for a stable update :/

But this is a clear bug and regression! g-k-p is broken as it is. Same about g-k-i.

Same here with Ubuntu 6.10 final, I get the list of the available keyboards but no image to show the key placements.

system is 6.10 x86_64, upgraded from a 6.06 with the 'gksu' command, worked on 6.06, forced to reinstall the gnome-control-center package to be sure, same result.

It is really ugly - especally two sets of buttons, you see?

I've build a fixed version for my own use (using a slightly-modified, that is a one that also changes Makefile.in, fedora patch), a .diff.gz file attached for people who do want to play around with it.

Sebastien: Please tell me, if such a changed version could enter edgy-updates (after a while in edgy-proposed). The patch applies cleanly, no problems encountered (although the source tells that it was build today, I'm using a patched version for a few days now). The bug is really annoying.

Regards,

Gert

PS: Here's a screenshot showing the keyboard-layout with the modified package :-)

not a control-center bug

Sergey, it's clear that the dialog is ugly and bugged without that patch, still I don't know org enough to be wanting to push that patch to a stable serie. If somebody wants to do that, feel free

Gert, you can read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/StableReleaseUpdates about the procedure to get that update to edgy

I just tried Herd 1 (solely because of this because I wanted to make a keyboard screenshot) and the bug is still present. Is it supposed to be like that?

It goes beyound Ubuntu not showing keyboard previews and looking ugly. There are other applications that depend on XkbGetKeyboard. In my case, it's Superkb. This application doesn't run at all in Ubuntu 6.10 because of the bug. It worked in Ubuntu 6.06 LTS.

I kindly ask for this bugfix to get pushed to mainstream.

Just confirming this is still broken in edgy.

Even worse, seems to be still broken in feisty as well.

Fixed with that upload:

 xorg-server (1:1.1.1-0ubuntu13) feisty; urgency=low
 .
   * 19_revert_xkb_change_breaking_XkbGetKeyboard.patch:
     - patch from fedora (with extra Makefile.in change), revert change that
       broke XkbGetKeyboard() (Ubuntu: #58083)
   * 37_Fix-__glXDRIbindTexImage-for-32-bpp-on-big-endian-platforms.diff:
     - upstream patch copied from the Debian package, fix blue screen with
       compiz on ppc (Ubuntu: #58373)

Any chance to get it in edgy? Feisty is a bit long way to go till release...

The patch is not trivial and I'm not an xorg hacker, I'm not comfortable to push it to stable. Maybe after some testing. Sergey, I can build a non-official deb for edgy if you want though, it would permit you to get a working version to look at the gnome-control-center bugs, what architecture do you use?

I would love debs for x86 (not 64) and ppc, if possible. Thanks a bunch.
But really, it would make sense to put it into testing, I think edgy users would love to get this one fixed as well.

We would gladly test it in Edgy and report any weirdness. I'm interested in sending the patch to stable.

(Yeah, it's not trivial, but it is a "revert to a previous known-to-be-working state" patch.)

Sebastien, is there any progress with debs for Edgy? I have so many bugs and patches in gnome bugzilla regarding this preview...;)

Does anyone know if there is a package that i can install that will fix this issue, it is rather annoying and i really need to use the keyboard layout view.

Packages for edgy i386 are available on http://people.ubuntu.com/~seb128/xorg-server-edgy-update, you can download them and install with "sudo dpkg -i *.deb"

thanks, works like a charm (I will report if anything breaks in the future, but after one hour of running all seems to be just fine)

Sebastien, thanks, this is really great. And it works. Would you please be able to build the same stuff for ppc please?

Sebastien, it works perfectly. Thanks a lot. I'll post any breakage.

Sorry for the nũb question, but is it "sudo apt-get [each package listed there]" followed by "sudo dpkg -i [one-by-one]"? Or am I just finding one that is appropriate for my system? Thanks so much in advance. You guys do great work.

You should just download the packages you have installed (you might check with dpkg -l) and issue sudo dpkg -i *.deb.

Thank you Octavio. This is the closest thing I have listed: ii xserver-xorg-i 1.1.0-0ubuntu1 X.Org X server -- keyboard input driver
Is it safe to assume I'm going with "core" rather than "dev"? I'm on Edgy, if that helps at all. Thanks again.

There's another solution available, with a less drastic fix: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=309424

In short, this distilled down to removing the existing /usr/share/X11/xkb (e.g. renaming it to .xkb-broken or something) and linking /usr/share/X11/xkb to /etc/X11/xkb:

    cd /usr/share/X11
    sudo mv xkb .xkb-broken
    sudo ln -s ../../../etc/X11/xkb/

Further investigation seems to indicate that the xkb-data-legacy package will provide everything we need, but that package has dependencies that will regress your system badly.

But I see the fact that we can't fix it in the distro proper as a major setback. Is it considered low risk enough to include something like this symlink in the xkb-data package, and thus fix it within the distro?

That sounds better to me than Seb having to track these packages, and users having to manually install them for the life of Edgy.

Tony, please don't advice people to do manual changes like that, that sort of hacks can break upgrades months later and then people are confused and blame the distribution for things they broke themself and not good for anybody.

That can be fixed and is fixed to feisty. Preview from keymaps is a small feature why people make so much noise about it? The patch is non trivial and we have no xorg maintainer at the moment which explains why nobody is wanting to take the responsability to do that change on a stable distribution

This is really interesting though. That hack implies that xkb-data-legacy provides everything X need to work properly. Does this mean xkeyboard-config package is broken somehow or what?
(and I respectfully disagree with Sebastian - it is still 2 months till feisty, and this bug is visible to _everyone_ trying to add new layout to the keyboard configuration).

Sebastian, it's more than just "preview from keymaps", whatever that is. After upgrading to Edgy, I lost my multimedia keys. I went to reassign my keyboard mapping from the pull down in the Kubuntu Systems Settings, and there were *no* keyboards to choose from, therefore no graphical way I could see to get my multimedia keys back.

Without being precious about it, IMO, this is a significant inconvenience.

If this is affecting everyone, then the small change to the packages as above might be worth it. If it's just me or a subset of people, then I don't understand what went wrong in my upgrade process (OK, so I didn't use update-manager)

> Preview from keymaps is a small feature why people make so much noise about it?

It goes beyound Ubuntu not showing keyboard previews and looking ugly. -- I can't use or develop my graphical keyboard launcher, so I had to change the way I launch applications because of this bug.

BTW, I have seen *no* negative side-effects from the packages you provided on you link above, two computers here have it installed, both are x86.

Sebastien, now that Ubuntu released a new security fix numbered 0ubuntu12.2, the packages you kindly provided for testing are constantly being targeted for upgrading by Update Manager. The ones from stable are *not* fixed yet.

I can affirm I have had no issues whatsoever during all this time, using the packages you provided.

edgy is not a LTS version and new stable will be available next will, it's not likely we will apply the change to edgy now

This has broken for me since upgrading from 7.10 to 8.04.

don't comment on a closed bug only because you have a similar issue