I got my brand new Librem 13v4 German verison. For some reason I had to reinstall Pure OS which I downloaded from the pure OS site. After that I realized the following issues:
the trackpad does not work
I chose the german keybord durcing installation, but the key with the pipe (|) and the <> brackets does not work. I can find no setting to make the key work. That is the key right next to the left shift key
@erichq,
the not working trackpad is kinda strange and I don’t know what causes that, but the “|” char not working is a know issue within the forum short search got me this solution hope that helps.
I removed the solution tag to my thread since this seems to suggest, that all problems are solved, which is not the case
The pipe symbol and the (at) symbol are still ot available. The cited solution did not work.
Today a ran an update and since that I have the angle brackets on the right key, but still no pipe and (at)
Hi there,
thanks for all your help so far, but none of the suggested solutions work with my Librem 13v4 German keyboard.
I would highly appreciate the purism support to provide a sound solution or at least a work around instead of just citing non-working comments.
Frankly, how can you sell a notebook for 1600 EUR without not even the keyborad working - with your own specific OS? Obviously you did not even try it.
@erichq just to make one thing clear I’m not working for purism and not part of their support team, I’m just trying to help.
A few thing that come to mind:
did you do a restart after setting that parameter or at least restarted the udev subsystem: sudo udevadm trigger --action=change
I’d be really interested in the content of your /etc/dev/keyboard file maybe some of the info from the Debian Keyboard wiki might help out.
Also if you want support from Purism you can mail them at support@puri.sm as described here
I hope your problem can be solved but since that “@” Key problem has never happened before I think something else is wrong with the Keyboard config.
copy /usr/lib/udev/hwdb.d/60-keyboard.hwdb to /etc/udev/hwdb.d: sudo cp /usr/lib/udev/hwdb.d/60-keyboard.hwdb /etc/udev/hwdb.d/
edit the new file, e.g.: sudo vi /etc/udev/hwdb.d/60-keyboard.hwdb
find the section labeled # Purism by typing /Purism (slash and then the word Purism) and hitting enter
delete the whole section or comment the section out - now vi gets interesting if you do not already know it. Simplest thing to delete those lines by maneuvering the cursor in the first line to be deleted and then pressing d twice to delete one row. Repeat until done.
save the edited file by hitting :wq followed by enter.
You can use your favorite text editor in place of vi. You also can comment the section out and make it look like the file on my Librem13v4:
Either way after reboot your keys should work (if I didn’t forget anything else I had to do on my very painful and disappointing way to a working keyboard.
A short explanation (to be corrected by people who do know and/or remember better than me): The english keyboard does have a firmware error and needs those lines to fully work. Unfortunately this workaround breaks the german keyboard which does not have this firmware error.
The file you copied and edited overrules the original file in /usr/lib/udev/hwdb.d. Any update to that original file will not activate for you if you choose this solution (and I do not see a good reason why this should be a problem).
From my point of view it is extremely disappointing that this issue has not already been fixed for customers who order their Librem with a german keyboard. I would go as far as saying that it is disrespectful to send a system to customers known not to work.
Hi ChriChri,
thank you so much for your help. I really appreciate that. But it did not work.
The angle brackets work now - as with another trial of a solution before. But it seems that my major problem is not the key next to the Y but the not working AltGr key.
And thanks for the hints with vi. It feels like some decades ago, but I wrote my whole master thesis with vi
Hm, I can’t remember having done anything for that key to work (but hey, that doesn’t mean anything ).
Could you have a look at the output of xev? It is contained in the package x11-utils that you might have to install.
Uhm, don’t know if this works in wayland (the default display server in PureOS). A quick search reveals that for wayland you’d use wev.
If you call x- or wev from a terminal (e.g. Tilux) you’ll get information about key-presses and mouse movement (inside the little test window) printed out to the terminal.
For xev it looks like this:
someuser@somehost:~$ xev
Outer window is 0x4200001, inner window is 0x4200002
Followed by a lot of stuff that is not interesting for your case.
If you press your key at the end of all that output, you’ll get some more output: one block for pressing the key down, one block for letting the key return back to its upper position. In my terminal this looks like this:
KeyPress event, serial 37, synthetic NO, window 0x4200001,
root 0x1b3, subw 0x0, time 266837517, (1584,638), root:(1634,1085),
state 0x10, keycode 108 (keysym 0xfe03, ISO_Level3_Shift), same_screen YES,
XKeysymToKeycode returns keycode: 92
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XmbLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: False
KeyRelease event, serial 37, synthetic NO, window 0x4200001,
root 0x1b3, subw 0x0, time 266837677, (1584,638), root:(1634,1085),
state 0x90, keycode 108 (keysym 0xfe03, ISO_Level3_Shift), same_screen YES,
XKeysymToKeycode returns keycode: 92
XLookupString gives 0 bytes:
XFilterEvent returns: False
You can see that a KeyPress and a KeyRelease event had been registered.
Within the output you can find keycode 108 (keysym 0xfe03, ISO_Level3_Shift) which describes that the keycode send by my AltGr key is 108 and it is translated to ISO_Level3_Shift which is the function you’d expect to write symbols like @ and € on a german keyboard.
Another difference ist that in your case both events - hit and release - produce XFilterEvent returns: False
in my case hitting the key produces XFilterEvent returns: True and the release XFilterEvent returns: False
But I do not know what that means.
You need to get your keyboard configuration right. Try:
sudo dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
Choose PC genèric de 105 tecles (intl.) and then Duits - Alemany (QWERTY) - don’t ask me, why it is in Dutch in my case. Then you can choose how your AltGr should work. I chose Der Standard für die Tastenbelegung and set your preference for the compose key (the key you need to generate utf-8 characters composed from two keypress like ø generated by pressing <compose> '/' 'o'. Choose whether you want to be able to restart your xserver by the proposed key combination and your done.
Check your /etc/default/keyboard again, reboot and try.
Hi ChriChri,
thanks again. I did all that already - and did it again after your post - and also tried different setting. No difference. The AltGr key is still not working