Custom keyboard layout is reset to default after standby or reboot

Question

I designed a keyboard layout for myself, after I run xmodmap it works OK, but after standby or reboot, the layout turn back to qwerty.

How can I set it as default? My OS is Debian Wheezy with XFCE4.

Answer 1

Check out this archlinux forum thread Xmodmap Reset after Suspend to RAM. There are several examples in the thread that'll get you started and show you how to setup a hook which will get triggered via the power management subsystem that will run your xmodmap setup each time you come out of suspend.

Something like the following script, saved as /etc/pm/sleep.d/11suspend (change the me in /bin/su - me to your actual username):

#!/bin/bash
case $1 in
    hibernate)
        echo "Hey guy, we are going to suspend to disk!"
        ;;
    suspend)
        echo "Oh, this time we're doing a suspend to RAM. Cool!"
        ;;
    thaw|resume)
        echo "oh, suspend is over, we are in $1 phase..."
            # Set Display #
    DISPLAY=:0.0 ; export DISPLAY
    /bin/su - me -c "sleep 3; /usr/bin/xmodmap /home/me/.xmodmaprc" &
        ;;
    *)  echo "somebody is calling me totally wrong."
        ;;
esac

Answer 2

Premilinary note: you shouldn't use the obsolete xmodmap command, but XKB (xkbcomp).

Then you can change the settings from your ~/.xsession script. Personally I have:

setxkbmap -types local -print | \
  sed -e '/xkb_symbols/s/"[[:space:]]/+local&/' > $HOME/.xkb/keymap/custom
xkbcomp -w0 -I$HOME/.xkb -R$HOME/.xkb keymap/custom $DISPLAY

in my ~/.xsession file, and my XKB settings are put in ~/.xkb/symbols/local and ~/.xkb/types/local files. This will change the settings after each X login.

Unfortunately these settings are lost after suspend/resume. There's a workaround: save them and restore them via pm-utils with a script in the /etc/pm/sleep.d directory; you may need

xhost +si:localuser:root

in your ~/.xsession script since root doesn't have your xauth information. I have given an example (for XKB): https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=633849#92