Keyboard shortcuts don't work


hmc

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Dec 19, 2011
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Bavaria, Germany
Hi guys,


I seem to remember that this issue has been discussed in another thread, but I can't find it currently. If anyone knows where, please point me to it.


I have set some keyboard boardcuts via Settings > Desktop > Keyboard / Shortcuts.


However, after a reboot the shortcuts are not active. But they are still displayed in the configuration dialog.


I'd be interested in the reason and how I can fix that.


HF7A1.


Thanks a lot!


Daniel
 
Long ago I've been struggling with these as well. I can't recall in detailed what I found out, but i never solved it and as far as i can remember someone said that it's a bug in the xfce-version that the PandoraOS uses. Wait a minute...it just came to my mind that i reported my issues here. The comments probably won't help you that much though.


By now I am using xbindkeys - which is neither installed nor in the angstrom-repo, but easy to compile - to assign shortkeys. The only small drawback that i noticed is that the command xmodmap (to change keyboard-layouts) takes much longer to execute when xbindkeys is running, but I don't really use xmodmap so far. Not sure right now if you have to manually edit the files mentioned in the above link in order to delete xfce-shortkeys before assigning the same key-combinations to xbindkeys.
 
hm... but this isn't a general problem. I had the shortcuts working before a fresh install of the same firmware, several times. This is the first time that they don't work (and I DID install from the same rootfs image!).


I vaguely remember a hint that the configuration file the shortcuts configuration dialog generates (or modifies) needs to be copied somewhere else on bootup, and that this copy is not done in case of the problem. But I have no idea about the details anymore.


I read your bug report on the bugtracker. Not sure if this is really the same issue.


But what is the configuration file you are refering to? WIth that information as a starter, I may be able to investigate further on my own.


Thanks!


Daniel

Lomaxx,


never mind. I just continued to read the comments of your bug report and there is all the info I need ;-)


Will investigate my problem further tonight.


Thanks,


Daniel
 
When you figure it out, be sure to post your results. I remember this bothering me a little way back when, but it wasn't a major feature I'd needed so I quickly forgot about it.
 
Solution found!


Here the two files


/home/daniel/Applications/Settings/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml (file 1)


and


/etc/xdg/op/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml (file 2)


were different.


The first one reflected the changes in the GUI dialog, the second one didn't. As in your bug report's comment.


I then copied over file 1 to file 2 and rebooted as you suggested.


Shortcuts did NOT work after this reboot.


But:


After some googling, I found the solution in the archlinux's Wiki:


https://wiki.archlin...are_not_working


Disabling the settings helper solved the problem for me.



Code:
mv /etc/xdg/autostart/xfce4-settings-helper-autostart.desktop /etc/xdg/autostart/xfce4-settings-helper-autostart.desktop.disabled


(There is no local settings helper .desktop file on the Pandora as suggested in the wiki article. Just the command above is necessary.)


So far this solution does not seem to have any side effects, so this might be something for the next hotfix.


Daniel
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I followed your instructions just for testing purposes.


On my system "~/Applications/Settings/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml" didn't exist. Maybe i removed it and didn't try to configure shortkeys afterwards. Anyway - since it wasn't there, i skipped the instructions to copy the file over to file 2. I executed the mv-command to disabled the helper-autostart and rebooted the Pandora just to be sure.


Afterwards i tried to configure shortkeys within xfce4-keyboard-settings which worked. Configuration was written to the file that i mentioned above in this answer, which didn't exist before. So i assume that copying over file 1 to file 2 has either to be done everytime you change your configuration or not all.


What i noticed is also that I can remove the shortkey-assignments that I configured myself, but I am not able to remove the existing shortkey-assignments like "xflock4", "xfrun4" and "xrandr ...". Maybe that's where copying over file 1 to file 2 helps. But if this is true then I'm quite sure that you have to copy them over every time.


I am still not able to remove shortkey-assignments within "xfwm4-settings" (command-name, try in terminal) and I think it's necessary to remove those specified there if you want to assign them to a shortkey for starting a program. Probably it's more or less the same as with copying over file 1 to file 2, just that you need to find the related config-files of xfwm4-settings.


I think we have to really wait for a new xfce-version to completely get rid of this problem.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hi Lomaxx,


there is no "xfce4-settings" command available on my Pandora. Only xfce4-settings-helper, xfce4-settings-editor and xfce4-settings-manager.


Copying over file 1 to 2 is NOT necessary for me to let changes in keyboard shortcut configuration take effect.


Actually, it behaves exactly as expected now, after disabling the xfce4-settings-helper in autostart.


I haven't tried to re-use already taken default shortcuts though.


Daniel
 
ah - I didn't know that this exists :) Interesting!


Well, application shortcuts are still strange. When I now look into



Code:
[FONT=arial][COLOR=#282828]~/Applications/Settings/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml[/COLOR][/FONT]



all defined shortcuts are in there, but all of them have 'type="empty"', except the one which I added when I used the dialog last time. That one has 'type="string"' and 'value="[assigned command line]".

In

Code:
 /etc/xdg/xfce4/xfconf/[color=#282828][font=arial, verdana, tahom, sans-serif]xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-keyboard-shortcuts.xml[/font][/color]

there are all the other shortcuts defined correctly, but NOT the one added last time. That one is missing completely here.


Even after a reboot this does not change.


Strange. I don't get how this system works.


But at least all shortcuts work now. :)


Daniel
 
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