tigervnc-1.9.0-r1 has weird keyboard layout

Message

Elleni · Post by **Elleni** » Sun Oct 13, 2019 5:03 pm

Thus I had it masked. Now unfortunately I unmerged my working version, because of virtual/pam became obsolete. I had forgotten that because of that reason I had this version masked before.

Now having emerged it, I realize that typing qwertz on my server connected via this tigervnc version, it spits out: 7890' trying to delete with <- button, it writes 5 while return button produces t. Whats the matter here?

As there is no other version in tree, I grabbed tigervnc-1.4.2-r2 ebuild from argent-main overlay to try to build that one as workaround, but ebuild tigervnc-1.4.2-r2.ebuild digest gives error EAPI=4 not being supported.

Help please. Are there other vnc clients, I could try, or how could I emerge 1.4.2 version or how can the keyboard layout be corrected in actual version?

Edit to add, found that I can use remmina to connect to my vps so I am calmed for the moment

Elleni · Post by **Elleni** » Wed Oct 16, 2019 6:49 pm

Anyone?

This is really weired as logging into the server with ssh I get the correct keyboard layout, only the login with vnc is affected. Can this have something to do, with the host configuration of my provider?

mike155 · Post by **mike155** » Wed Oct 16, 2019 7:34 pm

Please tell us how you start vncviewer (which parameters) and to which type of VNC server you connect. Is it the QEMU VNC Server? Or a VNC server running inside an OS? Which OS? Which VNC server?

Post by Hu » Thu Oct 17, 2019 1:19 am

When you connect over ssh, your keyboard is processed locally and a sequence of bytes is sent to the peer. When you connect over VNC, your keyboard is processed as X11 events, which the VNC viewer must translate into something useful to the peer. Usually, this produces the same result, but that is not guaranteed.

Elleni · Post by **Elleni** » Fri Oct 18, 2019 5:33 pm

Hello, thanks for your explanation Hu, makes sense to me

mike155, I use tigervnc client started with desktop icon from startmenu, no manual start over console- the type of vncserver I dont know. I know that the hypervisor of my provider is virtuozzo though.

Still looking for tigervnc-1.8.0-r3.ebuild as it was the last working version for me, where only some keys were different from my keyboard layout and I had got used to it. Unfortunately it is not available for download @zugaina.

Edit to add that I found it here and put it in local overlay to re-emerge that version successfully:
https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.g ... 3d19d8f1b0

needed patch for it to compile successfully:
https://gitweb.gentoo.org/repo/gentoo.g ... 3d19d8f1b0

With this version, I get qwerty keyboard layout and the numeric characters show up too (not on the numeric keyboard on the right side though). Also for some symbols I have a workaround for example I type "Alt+33" to get "!" - but as said that was good enough for me although not perfect.

mike155 · Post by **mike155** » Fri Oct 18, 2019 6:35 pm

Elleni, I use vncviewer from net-misc/tigervnc-1.9.0-r1 nearly every day to connect to the QEMU VNC server and to Windows machines. It works perfectly fine - no problems.

It could be that vncviewer doesn't work well with the VNC server of your provider.

However, it is also possible that something is misconfigured on your machine.

Please start vncviewer 1.9.0 from the terminal window and connect to the VNC server. Are there any (error) messages?
Please post the output of
Code: Select all
```
setxkbmap -query
```
and of
Code: Select all
```
setxkbmap -print -verbose 10
```
Please post the output of
Code: Select all
```
emerge -pv net-misc/tigervnc
```
Please start vncviewer 1.9.0 from a terminal window and connect to the VNC server. Add the parameter below when you start vncviewer
Code: Select all
```
-log *:stderr:100
```
vncviewer will now show scan codes when you press keys. For example, if I press key 'q', I will get:
Code: Select all
```
Fri Oct 18 21:10:36 2019
 Viewport:    Key pressed: 0x0010 => XK_q (0x0071)
 Viewport:    Key released: 0x0010 => XK_q (0x0071)
```
The first number (0x0010 = 16) is the scan code (not the keycode !), the second number the ASCII code. What do you get?

Elleni · Post by **Elleni** » Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:13 pm

Hi mike155, I re-emerged actual version so here we go:

vncviewer

Code: Select all

TigerVNC Viewer 64-bit v1.9.0
Built on: 2019-10-18 21:00
Copyright (C) 1999-2018 TigerVNC Team and many others (see README.rst)
See http://www.tigervnc.org for information on TigerVNC.

setxkbmap -query

Code: Select all

rules:      evdev
model:      pc105
layout:     ch,ch
variant:    ,

setxkbmap -print -verbose 10

Code: Select all

Setting verbose level to 10
locale is C
Trying to load rules file ./rules/evdev...
Trying to load rules file /usr/share/X11/xkb/rules/evdev...
Success.
Applied rules from evdev:
rules:      evdev
model:      pc105
layout:     ch,ch
variant:    ,
Trying to build keymap using the following components:
keycodes:   evdev+aliases(qwerty)
types:      complete
compat:     complete
symbols:    pc+ch+ch:2+inet(evdev)
geometry:   pc(pc105)
xkb_keymap {
	xkb_keycodes  { include "evdev+aliases(qwerty)"	};
	xkb_types     { include "complete"	};
	xkb_compat    { include "complete"	};
	xkb_symbols   { include "pc+ch+ch:2+inet(evdev)"	};
	xkb_geometry  { include "pc(pc105)"	};

emerge tigervnc -pv

Code: Select all

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies                              ... done!    
[ebuild   R    ] net-misc/tigervnc-1.9.0-r1::gentoo  USE="dri3 drm gnutls nls opengl pam xorgmodule -java -libressl -server -xinerama" 0 KiB

Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 KiB

As said - tigervnc-1.8.0-r3 brings me back qwerty wich is not perfect match of my keyboard layout (being swiss qwertz) but is good enough, so something must have changed along with this new version. Remmina by the way has the same qwerty layout as tigervnc in 1.8 version used to have.

mike155 · Post by **mike155** » Fri Oct 18, 2019 7:33 pm

Your output looks good. I get the same output - well, except that I get 'de' instead of 'ch', but that's umimportant.

I just added another question to my last post. Can you look at it, please?

I just read https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc6143, chapter 7.5.4 "KeyEvent". What matters is mostly the ASCII code (0x0071).

Code: Select all

Fri Oct 18 21:10:36 2019
 Viewport:    Key pressed: 0x0010 => XK_q (0x0071)
 Viewport:    Key released: 0x0010 => XK_q (0x0071)

I'm very excited about the output on your machine, when you press 'q' and your VNC server thinks that it is a '7'. It will tell us who is wrong: vncviewer or the VNC server.

Elleni · Post by **Elleni** » Fri Oct 18, 2019 8:03 pm

Hi Mike, and thanks for taking the time to troubleshoot this

user@localbox_hostname ~ $ LC_ALL=C vncviewer -log *:stderr:100

Code: Select all

TigerVNC Viewer 64-bit v1.9.0
Built on: 2019-10-18 21:00
Copyright (C) 1999-2018 TigerVNC Team and many others (see README.rst)
See http://www.tigervnc.org for information on TigerVNC.

Fri Oct 18 21:52:51 2019
 DecodeManager: Detected 12 CPU core(s)
 DecodeManager: Creating 4 decoder thread(s)
TcpSocket:   Connecting to myvpserver [ipadress] port number
 CConn:       connected to host myvpserver, Port number
 CConnection: reading protocol version
 CConnection: Server supports RFB protocol version 3.8
 CConnection: Using RFB protocol version 3.8
 CConnection: processing security types message
 CConnection: Server offers security type VncAuth(2)
 CConnection: Choosing security type VncAuth(2)
 CConnection: processing security message

Fri Oct 18 21:53:06 2019
 CConnection: processing security result message
 CConnection: processing security result message
 CConnection: Authentication success!
 CConnection: reading server initialisation
 CConnection: initialisation done
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key LVL3
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key HNGL
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key MDSW
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key ALT
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key META
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key SUPR
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key HYPR
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key I248
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key I249
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key I250
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key I251
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key I252
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key I253
 Viewport:    No key mapping for key I254
 PlatformPixelBuffer: Using shared memory XImage
 CConn:       Using pixel format depth 24 (32bpp) little-endian rgb888
 CConn:       Using Tight encoding

Fri Oct 18 21:53:45 2019
 Viewport:    Key pressed: 0x0010 => XK_q (0x0071)
 Viewport:    Key released: 0x0010 => XK_q (0x0071)

Following the output of tigervnc-1.8.0-r3:

Code: Select all

LC_ALL=C vncviewer -log *:stderr:100

TigerVNC Viewer 64-bit v1.8.0
Built on: 2019-10-18 22:05
Copyright (C) 1999-2017 TigerVNC Team and many others (see README.txt)
See http://www.tigervnc.org for information on TigerVNC.

Fri Oct 18 22:06:25 2019
 Parameters:  Unknown parameter AlertOnFatalError on line 28 in file
              /home/localuser/.vnc/default.tigervnc

Fri Oct 18 22:06:28 2019
 DecodeManager: Detected 12 CPU core(s)
 DecodeManager: Creating 4 decoder thread(s)
 TcpSocket:   Connecting to virtualservername [ipadress] port number
 CConn:       connected to host virtualservername port number
 CConnection: reading protocol version
 CConnection: Server supports RFB protocol version 3.8
 CConnection: Using RFB protocol version 3.8
 CConnection: processing security types message
 CConnection: Server offers security type VncAuth(2)
 CConnection: Choosing security type VncAuth(2)
 CConnection: processing security message

Fri Oct 18 22:07:09 2019
 CConnection: processing security result message
 CConnection: processing security result message
 CConnection: Authentication success!
 CConnection: reading server initialisation
 CConnection: initialisation done
 PlatformPixelBuffer: Using shared memory XImage
 CConn:       Using pixel format depth 24 (32bpp) little-endian rgb888
 CConn:       Using Tight encoding
 Viewport:    Unexpected release of key code 36

Fri Oct 18 22:07:15 2019
 Viewport:    Key pressed: 0x0018 => XK_q (0x0071)
 Viewport:    Key released: 0x0018 => XK_q (0x0071)

As I saw this on the 1.8 version,

Code: Select all

 Parameters:  Unknown parameter AlertOnFatalError on line 28 in file
              /home/localuser/.vnc/default.tigervnc

I renamed .vnc folder and re-compiled 1.9 version to try with new default.tivervnc configuration file, but still the same result.

Also compared the useflags on both versions

Code: Select all

emerge tigervnc -pv

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies                                      ... done!
[ebuild   R    ] net-misc/tigervnc-1.9.0-r1::gentoo  USE="dri3 drm gnutls nls opengl pam xorgmodule -java -libressl -server -xinerama" 0 KiB

Total: 1 package (1 reinstall), Size of downloads: 0 KiB

and

Code: Select all

These are the packages that would be merged, in order:

Calculating dependencies                               ... done!
[ebuild     UD ] net-misc/tigervnc-1.8.0-r3::test [1.9.0-r1::gentoo] USE="dri3 drm gnutls nls opengl pam xorgmodule -java -server -xinerama (-libressl%)" 0 KiB

Total: 1 package (1 downgrade), Size of downloads: 0 KiB

mike155 · Post by **mike155** » Fri Oct 18, 2019 9:47 pm

Elleni, thanks for the output.

Let me summarize. Do I understand correctly, that both vncviewer 1.8.0 and vncviewer 1.9.0 show 'XK_q (0x0071)' when you press key 'q'. But the VNC server thinks that you pressed a 'q' when you use vncviewer 1.8.0- and a '7' when you use vncviewer 1.9.0?

Now that's really strange. It seems to be a (regression) bug!

You could go to http://www.tigervnc.org and search the 'User forum' and the 'Developer forum' for similar posts. If you don't find any, you could create a bug report in one of those forums. I'm sure developers will be glad to hear about this bug.