Keyboard layout: switching from Amharic <> US

[Simon Schampijer]

Hi James,
sorry that you have so much trouble with this.

James wrote:
> On 9 Feb 2008, at 10:58, Simon Schampijer wrote:
>> Short term solution;
>>
>> - switch to a virtual console (alt+ctrl+F1 or alt+ctrl+F2) F1 is the 
>> mesh view key and F2 the friends view key
>> - edit /home/olpc/.i18n
>> - nano /home/olpc/.i18n
>>    - LANG="en_US.UTF-8"
>>    - ctrl+o for save and ctrl+x for quitting
> 
> Hi Simon,
> 
> Thanks for your rapid response.
> 
> I got into the virtual console, logged in as root, and edited 
> /home/olpc/.i18n using nano, as you suggested.  So far, so good.
> 
> How should I have left the virtual console to return to the Sugar GUI?

sugar runs on the third virtual console.
ctrl+alt+F3 (F3 is the home-key)

> I exited from the root account, then rebooted the machine.  It is now 
> most unhappy.  The virtual console appears and seems to cycle through 
> the same process over and over.  Eventually it settles down and displays 
> the following:
> 
> 
>   expected keysim, got KF86dbdBrightnessUp: line 72 of pc
>   xinit: No such file or directory (errno 2): Cannot register with 
> ConsoleKit: org.freedesktop.CkConnector.Error: Unable to open session: 
> Failed to connect to socket /var/run/dbus/system_bus_socket: No such 
> file or directory
>   Xlib: extension "XFree86-Misc" missing on display ":0.0".
>   the XKEYBOARD keymap compiler reports:
>   > Warning: Multiple names for keycode 211
>   >          Using <1211>, ignoring <AB11>
>   expected keysym, got KF86KbdLightOnOff; line 70 of pc
>   expected keysym, got KF86KbdBrightnessDown; line 71 of pc
>   expected keysym, got KF86KbdBrightnessUp; line 72 of pc
>   > Warning: Type "ONE_LEVEL" has 1 levers, but <HALT> has 2 symbols
>   >          Ignoring extra symbols
>   Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the Xserver
>   Traceback (most recent call last):
>   <Many lines which could be important snipped>
> 
>   Backtrace:
>   <Lines numbered from 0 to 7 snipped>
> 
>   Fatal server error
>   Caught signal 11: server aborting
> 
> 
>   Waiting for X server to shut down
> 
>   INIT: Id "x" respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes
> 
> 
> What should I do now?
> 
> 

I tried the steps you took on a ship.2 build (653). I think you run a 
similar build, or?
- modified /home/olpc/.i18n and /etc/sysconfig/keyboard like here: 
http://wiki.laptop.org/go/Ethiopian_Setup
- change home/olpc/.i18n back to US and rebooted
- this works - even if I put non-existant languages in i18n

After the X-server tries to start in a loop it then waits for 5 minutes. 
This is the time you have to fix up things :). Switch to another virtual 
console. (ctrl+alt+F2) and check that the files you modified are right 
(i18n and the keyboard one). My keyboard one still contain the amharic 
info but does not break on that - maybe you have an even earlier build 
or some other corrupted file?

Hope you get it back working,
    Simon