Ubuntu: keyboard layout randomly switching back and forth

Question

Ubuntu 10.10 i386 (beta), Dell n500 notebook

Several times a day my keyboard layout starts randomly switching back and forth all by itself. Scroll lock indicator blinks like a crazy.

Rebooting helps. In text console (CTRL+ALT+F1) all is OK.

Update: sometimes the problem goes away all by itself after some time.

Update: logging out and back in also helps. Perhaps there is some process that I could kill / restart manually?

Please help me to diagnose the problem.

Answer 1

(I only have 10.04 here, hopefully this hasn't changed too much.)

Switching between layouts with ScrollLock indicating the layout is a supported configuration. It's set in System / Preferences / Keyboard / Layouts. You can set up multiple layouts and select a checkbox to use different layouts in different windows. In the Options child dialog, there is an option to “Use keyboard LED to show alternative layout”.

As to what is triggering a change, it could be when you change windows (if you have that option enabled), or it could be when you press a key (look under “Key(s) to change layout” in the Options dialog).

If it's neither of these and you do have per-window layout, there might be a window gaining focus and immediately losing it. When the problem occurs, try looking in the system monitor for active applications that might be doing this, or type wmctrl -l in a command line and check if every line corresponds to something you expected (ask here if you have doubts as some window titles may not be self-explanatory).

Answer 2

Gotcha!

Killing gnome-settings-daemon solves the problem.