German keyboard support for gdm???

[Polytropon]

On Fri, 2 Feb 2018 05:04:24 +0100, Peter Ulrich Kruppa wrote:
> does anyone know how to make gnome's display manager gdm understand german
> keyboard input?

Historically, you put an entry in /etc/X11/xorg.conf,
but today, this is not so easy anymore. There are at
least two options:

a) Use X11 cofiguration /usr/local/etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/keyboard-de.conf

	Section	"InputClass"
		Identifier	"KeyboardDefaults"
		Driver		"keyboard"
		MatchIsKeyboard	"on"
		Option		"XkbLayout" "de"
	EndSection

See chapter 5.4.7.1. in the handbook:

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/x-config.html

b) Use HAL configuration /usr/local/etc/hal/fdi/policy/x11-input.fdi:

	<?xml version="1.0" encoding="iso-8859-1"?>
	<deviceinfo version="0.2">
	  <device>
	    <match key="info.capabilities" contains="input.keyboard">
		  <merge key="input.x11_options.XkbModel" type="string">pc102</	merge>
		  <merge key="input.x11_options.XkbLayout" type="string">fr</merge>
	    </match>
	  </device>
	</deviceinfo>

See chapter 5.9. in the handbook:

https://www.freebsd.org/doc/handbook/x11-understanding.html

c) Use Gnome's configuration utility (the one which can also
configure gdm). I've never used that, so I cannot be more
specific, sorry. :-)



> I can find many discussions, hints and ideas in the web, but whatever I
> try, gdm stubbornly insists on using en_US default keyboard.

Which idea(s) did you already test?



> I am running gdm-3.16.4_3 from ports on FreeBSD 11.1-RELEASE amd64 .
> My german keyboard is supported on console and "inside" Gnome 3 , but not
> on gdm's username/password dialog.

Which can cause lots of "fun" if you're user name or password
includes german Umlauts, Eszett, and special characters. ;-)



-- 
Polytropon
Magdeburg, Germany
Happy FreeBSD user since 4.0
Andra moi ennepe, Mousa, ...