SUMMARY: German keyboard layout won't work with Sol9 Xsun

Hi,

I apologize for this _extremely_ late summary. It may still be useful for
the archive.

I received a question from Casper Dik regarding the problem but he
didn't have a solution :-/

Just now I have noticed that some months after my question, two people
asked (to the old temporary address I use for this message again)
whether I had found a solution because they experienced a similar
problem with USB keyboard and a KVM switch. From this, I conclude that
the problem had not been solved by patches until November 2003.

Here's what I found during my investigations:

- For the console, we could use /usr/bin/loadkeys to get the German layout
  but we were unable to use the '#' key. Big disadvantage.

  Add one of the following to /etc/init.d/keymap

    # for type6 keyboards
    /usr/bin/loadkeys /usr/share/lib/keytables/type_6/germany

    # for type5 keyboards                      
    /usr/bin/loadkeys /usr/share/lib/keytables/type_4/germany_5

    # for type4 keyboards
    /usr/bin/loadkeys /usr/share/lib/keytables/type_4/germany


- For X/CDE we tried to use the X keyboard extension XKB which solved
  the problem only partially because keys would not auto-repeat anymore,
  even without any KVM switch involved ('xset r ...' could not enable
  it).
 
  Copy /usr/dt/config/Xservers to /etc/dt/config/ and use
    :0    Local local_uid@console root /usr/openwin/bin/Xsun :0 -nobanner +kb -xkbmap germany5

  Since there is no map germany5.xkm available in the base system we
  need to create it and copy it to /usr/openwin/lib/X11/xkb/compiled/
  where Xsun will look for it.

    $ cd /usr/openwin/lib/X11/xkb
    $ ./xkbcomp -xkm -o compiled/germany5.xkm -m Germany5 keymap/sun/de

  I could not get Xsun to create the map file automatically, like
  XFree86 seems to do it.


ciao
   Klaus Heinz


I wrote:
> Hi sunmanagers,
> 
> the scenario:
> 
>            A                                             B
>           280R                                          280R
> (Sol8+rec.Patches from 3 Months ago)    (Sol9+rec.Patches from last week)
>                                    |    |          
>                                   usb  usb
>                                    |    |          
>                                  KVM-switch (Dakota Ultraview)
>                                      |
>                                  German PC keyboard
> 
> 
> System A (set up by a third party, formerly equipped with its own keyboard)
> can be used on the KVM-switch with the German keyboard without problems,
> so I assume the switch does The Right Thing to identify the PC-keyboard
> as a German SUN keyboard.
> 
> However, system B does not recognize the German keyboard and uses the
> default US keymap. Using /usr/bin/loadkeys  I can get the German layout
> on the console but unfortunately this doesn't affect dtlogin/CDE.
> /usr/openwin/bin/xmodmap could be used once the user is logged in, but
> again dtlogin doesn't work with this solution.
> 
> Docs.sun.com only mentions the dip switches on older type4/5 keyboards
> as a means to force a certain layout but nothing for the new USB
> keyboards.
> 
> Has anything changed between Solaris 8 and 9 with respect to the
> keyboard configuration which could cause this different behaviour?
> 
> Searching through the sunmanagers archive, Solaris FAQ and Google I
> found no hints how to force a certain keyboard layout for dtlogin/CDE.
> 
> TIA and I will summarize,
> 
>      Klaus
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