International Keyboard Problem Sled 10, Thinkpad T61

Hello,

I am running SLED 10 on a Thinkpad T61. I have tried to set the keyboard to the English international variant by changing the setting in the YaST2 Control Center > System > Keyboard Layout. It works fine each time in the test line, but when I save the settings and exit, the changes do not take effect in any productive way.

As an example, to form an e with a certain accent, one could type 'e. In my case, after the apostraphe keystroke, no following character can be displayed, and instead disappears with the accent marker.

I also went to Applications > Keyboard and changed the settings there, to no avail. A few times I received a message saying the keyboard systems were set differently, and which one should I choose, but neither choice produced a working international keyboard.

I greatly appreciate your suggestions and help!

I am running SLED 10 on a Thinkpad T61. I have tried to set the keyboard to the English international variant by changing the setting in the YaST2 Control Center > System > Keyboard Layout. It works fine each time in the test line, but when I save the settings and exit, the changes do not take effect in any productive way. [/b]

Often one needs to exit X window, log out, and log in (restarting X) to apply such a setting. If one simply exits YaST2, the setting changes may not be evident. Did you try restarting X window ?

Edit: Before I forget, WELCOME to suseforums.net

Often one needs to exit X window, log out, and log in (restarting X) to apply such a setting. If one simply exits YaST2, the setting changes may not be evident. Did you try restarting X window ?

Edit: Before I forget, WELCOME to suseforums.net
[/b]

Thank you for the big red welcome! :-)

I've tried logging out and logging in and even restarting the computer, but the changes never take place (or at least, just the buggy change where I can't use apostrophes and quotation marks without pressing spacebar, and cannot produce accents). Any other ideas?

Hello,

I am running SLED 10 on a Thinkpad T61.
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Running SLED10, you should be able to get support directly from Novell: Yast > Miscellaneous > something like "Support Query" (in openSUSE, for SLED look around).

With openSUSE there are language CDs, check that out; can be set during install at two points

YaST/Modules/Keyboard Layout @ http://en.opensuse.org/YaST/Modules/Keyboard_Layout

I don't have SLED up ATM, sorry; check with Novell as above.

Good luck & post back so others can benefit when you have it resolved.

Running SLED10, you should be able to get support directly from Novell: Yast > Miscellaneous > something like "Support Query" (in openSUSE, for SLED look around).
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Thanks for the reply.
I contacted Novell, and they politely told me they do not offer support for SLED 10 if it was preinstalled on a Lenovo product, and that I must instead contact them. So I called their support line and spoke with someone who did not know what SLED 10 was, and he informed me I needed to contact whoever maintains that operating system, no matter who installed it on my Thinkpad. I rang up Novell once more and spoke with a different support guy, and he gave me a few other numbers at IBM to try, and reaffirmed the first "no, not us" position. Simlarly, a second call Lenovo's way, and they were asking me to purchase a ticket to speak with the software support team, though they would not be able to address any linux problems.

So, in the end, i'm not sure who I should actually seek out between the two groups, but neither party was ready to step up to the job.

After googling around, it looks like I could just use xmodmap and set up dead keys myself. Otherwise, the keyboard can be properly set to a French layout for all the additional accents I need (I still need to figure out how to switch between keyboards easily though). I'd still be curious to know if anyone else had this problem though, as other layouts seem to work fine for me..

Thanks again for your suggestions!

So, in the end, i'm not sure who I should actually seek out between the two groups, but neither party was ready to step up to the job.[/b]

Hmmm.... sort of defeats the purpose of going with SLED.

If it were me, I would copy all the important SLED/SuSE config files to a USB stick, and maybe print out some of them, and then install openSUSE-10.3. ... or simply wait for a month and install openSUSE-11.0. ...

If one does not get the support, I don't see much point in going with SLED. At least with openSUSE there is a higher (IMHO) possibility that users on this forum or other SuSE forums can help you.

If it were me, I would copy all the important SLED/SuSE config files to a USB stick, and maybe print out some of them, and then install openSUSE-10.3. ... or simply wait for a month and install openSUSE-11.0. ...
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I could hold off a month and definitely give openSUSE-11.0 a shot.
This might be getting a bit off topic of the original post, but which are the "important" config files, and where are they (e.g. does /etc/sysconfig cover all of the major configurations I should be saving?)

If I understand correctly, one of the benefits of preinstalled linux on this computer is that the hardware is in reasonable harmony with this OS. Transferring these config files presumably preserves this? I can imagine the sorts of things I would want to copy (sound, video, keyboard configurations for instance), just not sure which files I'd need in the end.

Once saved, is it as simple as just replacing the existing config files on the new distro I install, or a more delicate procedure than that?

Many thanks once more.

... which are the "important" config files, and where are they (e.g. does /etc/sysconfig cover all of the major configurations I should be saving?) [/b]

I always save:
/boot/grub/menu.lst
/etc/fstab
/etc/X11/xorg.conf
/etc/modprobe.d/sound
my complete "cups" printer directory (I'm not at a linux PC right now, so I can't give specific location).

A real conservative person would save everything under the /etc directory.

If I understand correctly, one of the benefits of preinstalled linux on this computer is that the hardware is in reasonable harmony with this OS. Transferring these config files presumably preserves this?[/b]

Well, IMHO Linux is Linux. Hence while you are correct that someone has taken the time to ensure the config files are setup to function with SLED, I believe that the information in those files should be applicable to most Linux versions (and not just openSUSE nor just SLED).

I can imagine the sorts of things I would want to copy (sound, video, keyboard configurations for instance), just not sure which files I'd need in the end.[/b]

* xorg.conf - give keyboard, video, mouse config
* sound - gives custom sound config
* fstab - gives hard drive setup
* menu.lst - gives boot configuration
* cups files for printing

Once saved, is it as simple as just replacing the existing config files on the new distro I install, or a more delicate procedure than that?[/b]

In truth, I keep these "backed up files" from an old Linux release for emergencies, if the new Linux install has problems. Then what I typically do (if the new install has problems) is check the inside of these functional files (in your case on SLED) and compare it to the same files on the newly installed Linux. Sometimes this leads to me trying hand edits.

Worst case is a complete copy of the original file (from the old release) is used to replace the new file (from the freshly installed release), but that is only as a last resort. ..... I have had to do that for SuSE-10.3, when I could not get IPP network printing to work after a brief attempt, I simply copied one or two of my SuSE-10.1 cups files over to 10.3, and had immediate network printing functionality. Also, back in 1998, to get X working for the first time, I copied someone else's (on the same laptop model) x86org.conf file (which conceptually is the same as xorg.conf with today's X). But this is rather rare.

I always save:..
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I will do just that. Thanks for your help.