Permanently set keyboard layout in X11

Question

I need a psychiatrist for my PC.

It is convinced it is an iMac (sort of).

Seriously: I have a problem which popped up apparently from nowhere, most likely due to some upgrade with "side effects", but I really do not know what happened.

Granted, I have a rather convolute setup:

• X64 PC running windows 7
• VirtualBox headless Virtual Machine running Debian (stretch)
• I access the VM via ssh (KiTTY) with X11 forwarding
• Usually I work at the command-line, but sometimes I use graphic programs.
• I have the current version of VcXserv installed on host to serve Xclients.

This is working since years.

Now suddenly my keyboard started "acting strange" just for X clients (plain ssh terminal is unaffected).

After a lot of digging around I found something:

this is the output of setxkbmap -print -verbose 10:

Setting verbose level to 10
locale is C
Trying to load rules file ./rules/xorg...
Trying to load rules file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/xorg...
Success.
Applied rules from xorg:
rules:      xorg
model:      macintosh
layout:     it
options:    grab:break_actions
Trying to build keymap using the following components:
keycodes:   macintosh+aliases(qwerty)
types:      complete+numpad(mac)
compat:     complete+xfree86(grab_break)
symbols:    pc+macintosh_vndr/it+inet(apple)
geometry:   macintosh(macintosh)
xkb_keymap {
        xkb_keycodes  { include "macintosh+aliases(qwerty)"     };
        xkb_types     { include "complete+numpad(mac)"  };
        xkb_compat    { include "complete+xfree86(grab_break)"  };
        xkb_symbols   { include "pc+macintosh_vndr/it+inet(apple)"      };
        xkb_geometry  { include "macintosh(macintosh)"  };
};

Sure enough setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout it solves the issue, but it will be back at next VM boot.

How can I set this permanently? (note I have no local xserver on VM, so I don't have a ~/.xinitrc and similar files)

I would also like to understand what happened. Can someone suggest where to look?

Answer 1

Try setting a system default for X:

$ sudo localectl set-x11-keymap it pc105

... that may only affect Xservers on the host, but try that first; as a side-effect it'll set an equivalent console keymap which might be part of the wonky detection.

If that doesn't work, just run an appropriate setxkbmap | xkbcomp routine in a ~/.profile or ~/.bashrc:

 if [ -n $DISPLAY ] ; then
   setxkbmap -model pc105 -layout it -print | xkbcomp - $DISPLAY
 fi

That will get run when you log into the SSH session, so any graphical programs you run afterwards should get the right keymap.