I would like to use the German keyboard layout when logging in. I tried to change the layout during the login process by first enabling the on-screen-keyboard and then clicking on the settings-key, but English is the only available option.
The rest of the system uses my desired layout automatically after I have logged in. It’s only the login screen that gives me headaches. However, there is one strange thing that I can observe whenever I start a new graphical terminal:
$ localectl
Could not get properties: Access denied
$ localectl
System Locale: LANG=de_DE.UTF-8
VC Keymap: de
VC Toggle Keymap: neo
X11 Layout: de
X11 Model: pc105
X11 Options: terminate:ctrl_alt_bksp
When I run localectl two (or more) times, then the first command always gives me the above error message. This doesn’t really bother me, but I wonder if it could explain why GDM doesn’t pick my language settings up.
And yes, I have rebooted a few times. My keyboard layout settings are persistent and I have set my system to German in all conceivable places.
I’ve scratched my head about this. The official GDM docs are unfortunately very outdated because they still speak about gconf which has long been replaced by dconf.
I have configured my system to support both German (primary option) and English keyboard layouts and I can switch between the two in Gnome without any issues after login.
Any ideas what I could look into next? I haven’t used GDM before. I have also investigated the script /etc/gdm/Init/Default which works with all kinds of X11 files which is a bit strange, because Bluefin uses Wayland. That script invokes setxkbmap to set the keyboard layout. But that shouldn’t affect wayland. When I run setxkbmap -v I get:
WARNING: Running setxkbmap against an Xwayland server
Trying to build keymap using the following components:
keycodes: evdev+aliases(qwerty)
types: complete
compat: complete
symbols: pc+us+inet(evdev)
geometry: pc(pc105)
Which contradicts the above localectl command, because the setxkbmap -v says that everything is US-english. Which means that setxkbmap doesn’t have much of a clue what is going on.
When I run setxkbmap en it has no effect on my current layout which makes it unlikely that /etc/gdm/Init/Default has any relevant effect on the issue.