Cannot type in Cyrillic in GNOME

[hellfire[bg]]

Hi there. I just installed Fedora 13 and i noticed a very annoying problem. I cannot type in Cyrillic in any of GNOME`s applications, however i can type in Cyrillic in other programs - like Firefox for example. I`ve tried in Rhythmbox, network manager (the configuration dialogs), gedit, nautilus, etc. I`ve also tried in Firefox where it works and for now is my only non GNOME application. The curios thing is that Cyrillic does work in gnome-terminal... I am currently using Bulgarian phonetic traditional layout but i`ve also tried with Russian and Macedonian without success. My Fedora installation is fully updated.

[tif]

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1301/...c04a25b0_b.jpg
How do you try to write in Cyrillic ?
It works for me.

[hellfire[bg]]

Hmm i`ve made an ordinary configuration through the gnome-keyboard properties. To avoid explaining i`ll just post screenshots:


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Ако наистина и ти с Fedora 13 значи е много странно. Почти нищо не съм променял след инсталацията, а проблемът го забелязах още след като инсталирах. По време на инсталацията избрах зa клавиатурна подредба американски английски. Помислих си да не би порблемът да е заради модела клавиатура, който съм избрал (въпреки, че ми е точно такава) и пробвах с generic клавиатура, но пак не помогна. Пробвах и да премахна всички скрити папки с настройките не GNOME и да си копирам съответните папки от инсталация на Debian, но не помогна.

PS
To the English speakers - i basically explained that i just have a default Fedora install with Cyrillic layout set up via GNOME`s keyboard settings program.

---------- Post added at 11:36 PM CDT ---------- Previous post was at 08:28 PM CDT ----------




EDIT

As another user suggested i tried adding a new user and it worked. In the new user i can type in Cyrillic normally. So i removed my old use completely and created a new one with the same name. But again Cyrillic didn`t work with this new user. I tried it several times - i completely removed the user home folder (after backing up my data), i removed the user group and the user and created a new user with the same name. And it isn`t working... The strange thing is that the log in picture which i selected for my old user is still the same even after i deleted the user several times and tried to change with one of the stock pictures. I tried renaming the file of the picture but stays again. All of this is strange because i always thought that user settings are only kept in the users` home folders and i just can`t see how this can possible after i have deleted my user and its home folder and group. This is quite a mystery to me.


EDIT

I can also log in in my new user with my fingerprit even after i have deleted my original user and created a new one with the same name.

[AdamW]

just deleting the user account doesn't necessarily delete the /home/username directory which contains all that user's settings.

[hellfire[bg]]

Oh, i did delete it by hand just to make sure - rm -rf /home/hellfire (hellfire was my user name)

[AdamW]

then I'm, er, all out of snappy responses =) It sounds like *something* system-wide has per-user configuration, so when you delete and re-create the user account with the same name / UID, it knows it's the 'same' account and uses the same configuration for it. But I'm darned if I can think what.

[hellfire[bg]]

To make things more interesting i played with the user IDs and with the group IDs - i mean that when i deleted my user (in my case the user name was hellfire and the group name was hellfire as well) i also deleted his group and then i also deleted the user home folder. After that when i created the new user with the same name i created it with a different user and group ID - the original user and group ID was 500 (it was the first user created during the install) and the new user and group ID was 503. The problem is currently solved - i have created a new user and i`ve put all my stuff there (movies, games, music, photos, etc) and i`ve configured the account as i need. But the mystery remains and i`d like to know why is this happening. I was also thinking that whatever settings a user has must be saved somewhere. And since a user have write rights only to his home directory removing it completely should have solved the problem. It didn`t. Then it occurred to me that a user can also write in /tmp so i removed everything there as well (including hidden files) but it didn`t help either Now i`ve run out of ideas... If there is indeed some systemwide per user configuration it still has to save the settings somewhere. And if it saves the settings in a place different from the user home folder or /tmp it must ask me for a root password. But i don`t remember having been asked for a root password while saving my settings. In the end to sum things up:
1 During the install i created user hellfire
2 The said user has the problem with Cyrillic keyboard layout which i have described
3 I found out that if i create a new user he doesn`t have the problem
4 So i tried removing user hellfire and creating a new one with the same name but it didn`t help - in the process of removing user hellfire i deleted his home folder (with rm -rf), i also deleted everything i /tmp , i also deleted the group hellfire and finally when i created the new user hellfire i created it with a different user and group ID
5 Except the problem with the Cyrillic keyboard layout there are several things that the new user hellfire keeps from the old user hellfire - it has the same log in picture. I selected the picture in gnome-about-me just after the installation and it was picture in pictures folder in my user home folder (the absolute path was /home/hellfire/Изображения/1.jpg). The strange thing about the picture is that after logging in into the new user hellfire i tried changing it to something else from gnome-about-me but it didn`t help. The new user can also log in with the same fingerprint (i am using Fedora 13 on a Thinkpad T61 laptop with fingerprint reader) as the old user - like with the log in picture i had set up the fingerprint reader via gnome-about-me just after my first log in into the system.
6 Even before deleting my original user hellfire (at the time i thought that deleting a whole user over a simple configuration issue was an overkill) i tried setting GNOME keyboard settings to default - in gnome-keyboard-properties in the layouts tab i pressed the reset to defaults button and indeed it resetted the settings to defaults (which means selecting Generic 105 keys keyboard type and American English) and then added the Bulgarian layout but i still experienced the same problem.

[BugRocks1]

All configuration files installed by default(but not the ones created after)

rpm -qc `rpm -qa` | less

Gnome uses the usr directory to store mandatory configurations, I just don't remember where.

Correction:

in /etc/gconf (maybe?)

Gnome Simple Greeter Configuration

gconftool-2 --direct --config-source xml:readwrite:/etc/gconf/gconf.xml.mandatory --type bool --set "/apps/gdm/simple-greeter/disable_user_list" "true"

http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=205633

e.g.:

Modifying the simple greeter options needs to be done by right clicking on those options in gconf-editor and choosing to make them mandatory or creating them in a folder in /usr

---------- Post added at 12:02 AM CDT ---------- Previous post was at 12:00 AM CDT ----------

locate gconf may show where it is being stored.

[hellfire[bg]]

rpm -qc `rpm -qa` | less

This lists all of the configuration files created during install, i didn`t see anything strange there.

e.g.:

Modifying the simple greeter options needs to be done by right clicking on those options in gconf-editor and choosing to make them mandatory or creating them in a folder in /usr

I don`t think that problem is with gdm`s greeter.

Anyway the problem is more serious than i thought. In my new user (named Alexander) i have the same broader issue - i cannot change some very basic settings. I have no problems with Cyrillic but right now the problem is manifesting itself in two ways:
1. By default i have the "american international, with dead keys" keyboard layout. I added "Bulgarian traditional phonetic" layout and i added "American English" layout (because i prefer it to the default american layout and removed "American international, with dead keys" layout. However after i log in and then log out The two newly added layouts are there (Bulgarian traditional phonetic and American English) but "American international, with dead keys" is there too even though i have removed it.
2. I tried to set a login face picture for myself but after logging out i cannot see it in the GDM face browser.

The way i see it all my problems are in fact symptoms of the same problem - inability to save basic settings - saves are not kept and after logout my user settings are reverted to some defaults. This would imply that i don`t have permissions to write somewhere where i should have such permissions.

UPDATE
chown -R Alexander Alexander (username Alexander and home folder Alexander) does not help. I`wondering whether i should reinstall Fedora. This is very annoying. The strange thing is that i have already changed a lot of settings on my account and the changes are saved - like wallpaper, applets, icons on the panels, etc.

[BugRocks1]

e.g. = exempli gratia = for example.

I didn't mean that simple greeter was the problem, I just used it, as a example for mandatory configurations that are stored in /etc/config/something.

I'm sorry for the confusion.

Source:
http://ancienthistory.about.com/od/a...s/f/ievseg.htm

As for the problem you could try looking inside /etc/config to see if there are any mandatory configuration files in there that override normal settings, also some settings need to be mandatory like the simple greeter that does not work, if it is not set as a mandatory one. You can set it as a normal user but it doesn't work.

The language configuration in Gnome is stored in ~/.dmrc if it is not setting it then it is a bug and you should report it, although I saw an update dealing with some greek config's there were being overwriten by something, which reminds me to ask, have you updated your system yet?

If no do so please.

[AdamW]

hellfire: yeah, my assessment matches yours pretty much exactly, which is why I'm confused :/

bugrocks1: GNOME doesn't store any actual configuration in /usr . What it stores in /usr are gconf schemas, which define what the gconf keys are, and their default values. But any *changes* to the defaults are stored either in /etc/gconf (if they're made system-wide) or in ~/.gconf (if they're made by a user).

[hellfire[bg]]

In the end i got quite mad with the situation and removed Fedora and installed Debian Unstable on its place which i normally use (i just wanted to test the new Fedora release) and so far have been happy with it. Still it is quite puzzling what was the problem. The original problem with Cyrillic i think could have been solved by selecting IBus for the default input method in the program IM Choser (it is in System->Settings->Input methods or something like that - it was in Bulgarian in my computer) - apparently it was not set up like that by default. But due to my bigger problem of not being able to save settings when i tried this it didn`t work.

[BugRocks1]

bugrocks1: GNOME doesn't store any actual configuration in /usr . What it stores in /usr are gconf schemas, which define what the gconf keys are, and their default values. But any *changes* to the defaults are stored either in /etc/gconf (if they're made system-wide) or in ~/.gconf (if they're made by a user).

Oops! my mistake you are right it is not in the /usr it is in the /etc.

[AdamW]

hellfire: well I'm sorry I couldn't give you more helpful advice glad to hear it's working with Debian, it's an excellent distribution.

[hellfire[bg]]

Thanks for the help! Fedora is an excellent distribution too and i think it really drives the linux progress forward. The new release was quite exciting for me too because of the included 3d in the nouveau drivers - it worked quite fine on my Quadro NVS 140m.