Keyboard repeat/delay is reset when plugging in usb keyboard in Ubuntu 12.10 xfce

Every time I plug in an external keyboard to my laptop the keyboard repeat and delay are set to the slow default. My current workaround is to open the keyboard settings dialog and slightly move the delay slider. This is annoying and happens to me every day so I'd like a better/faster solution.

This bug report from Karmic is exactly what's happening to me, but I'm running xfce4 on 12.10 and not gnome on Karmic.

Is there a script I could write to reload the xfce4 settings anytime a usb keyboard is plugged in? (udev rule?)

Any help in solving this problem is appreciated.

1 Answer

I know this is a dated problem, but it STILL exists till today. See e.g.

Until the xfce guys can get this straight, here are some sample scripts that could be used to fix the problem. It applies to a single-xfce4-session kind of situations (which covers the majority of user case), i.e. no two or three simultaneous X sessions.

The first is file /etc/udev/rules.d/50-external-keyboard.rules, which invokes another script upon insertion of a particular USB keyboard (you'll need to adjust your idVendor and idProduct numbers):

SUBSYSTEM=="usb", ATTR{idVendor}=="045e", ATTR{idProduct}=="071d", RUN+="/etc/udev/_Actions/x-keyboard-rates-launcher.sh"

The launcher script is a proxy launcher which drops the privilege to the user level for security reasons. Save this as /etc/udev/_Actions/x-keyboard-rates-launcher.sh and adjust X_USER to your name:

#!/bin/sh
# Adapted from
# Set DEBUG to something non-null string if we want to debug the script.
DEBUG=
X_USER=wirawan
export DISPLAY=:0
export XAUTHORITY="/home/$X_USER/.Xauthority"
Log () { if [ -n "$DEBUG" ]; then echo "$*" >> /tmp/udev_test_action.log fi
}
Log "$ACTION : $(date)"
if [ "${ACTION}" = "add" ]
then if [ -n "$DEBUG" ]; then export su -c "/bin/sh /etc/udev/_Actions/x-keyboard-rates-user.sh $DISPLAY $X_USER >> /tmp/udev_test_action.$X_USER.log 2> /tmp/udev_test_action.$X_USER.err" $X_USER & else su -c "/bin/sh /etc/udev/_Actions/x-keyboard-rates-user.sh $DISPLAY $X_USER > /dev/null 2>&1" $X_USER & fi
fi

Then this is the real script that reapply your keyboard parameters based on your own xfce settings. Save this as /etc/udev/_Actions/x-keyboard-rates-user.sh:

#!/bin/sh
# 20150318
# This script is supposed to run on the user level, not as the root.
if [ -n "$DEBUG" ]; then set -x
fi
X_USER=${2:-wirawan}
export DISPLAY=${1:-:0}
export XAUTHORITY=${3:-/home/$X_USER/.Xauthority}
is_x_running () {
# Detects whether the X server is up and running on the
# given display xdpyinfo > /dev/null 2>&1
}
is_user_session_up () {
# Detects whether the X session of interest is up pgrep xfce4-session -u $X_USER > /dev/null 2>&1
}
get_keyboard_settings () { /usr/bin/xfconf-query -c keyboards -p /Default/KeyRepeat/Delay \ && /usr/bin/xfconf-query -c keyboards -p /Default/KeyRepeat/Rate
}
apply_keyboard_settings () { if [ $# -eq 2 ]; then /usr/bin/xset r rate $1 $2 else return 2 fi
}
Log () { if [ -n "$DEBUG" ]; then echo "$*" fi
}
Log "$ACTION :user: $(date)"
if [ "${ACTION}" = "add" ]
then sleep 1s if is_x_running; then if is_user_session_up; then KB_SETTINGS=$(get_keyboard_settings) || { Log "Error: cannot get keyboard settings" exit 1 } apply_keyboard_settings $KB_SETTINGS || { Log "Error: cannot apply keyboard settings" exit 1 } else Log "Warning: target user session is not up; quitting" fi else Log "Warning: X is not running; quitting" fi
fi

Good luck!

Wirawan