FC3 -- KDE CDROM, xmodmap and pilot-xfer

[Malcolm Cowe]

I took the plunge and upgraded from RH7.3 to FC3 last week, and I have
to say it's been a bit of a mixed bag. So far, there remain 3 issues
which I cannot resolve satisfactorily.

I've been using RH since 4.2, and this is the first time that I have 
been left with an operating environment that is unable to do all of the 
things I normally expect of it. I have FC2 on my laptop and it's working 
great, but this FC3 installation has left me feeling uncomfortable. Not 
even the Tao of Yum can restore absolute calm.

To clarify the platform a little, I chose a fresh installation of FC3 on
a brand new [Seagate] HDD. My computer is a generic P3 Tualitin based
system with an Asus motherboard. Very standard stuff and has worked very
well under RH7.3. The only non-standard component is the keyboard, which
is a UK Macintosh USB keyboard.

Issue 1: The first problem I encountered is that under KDE, and only 
under KDE, I cannot access the CDROM device. A dialogue box labeled 
"Error - kio_devices_mounthelper" returns the following:

mount: /dev/hdc already mounted or /media/cdrecorder busy
Please check that the disk is entered correctly.

 From within the KDE session, opening a terminal and mounting the device 
manually returns the same error. But log out, and log back in using 
GNOME and all is well. Similarly, logging out of KDE and choosing a 
command line login from which to issue the mount command also works.

So now we don't use KDE. I'm not heartbroken, but it is annoying and 
unnecessary.

Issue 2: Xmodmap doesn't work reliably. As stated earlier, I use a UK 
Macintosh keyboard. Yes, on my x86 computer. Under RH, to get this to 
work properly required some entries in /etc/X11/Xmodmap. Specifically, 
my Xmodmap file contains:

! Euro sign support
keycode 26 = e E currency
keycode 54 = c C cent
keycode 113 = Mode_switch Mode_switch Multi_key
keycode 11 = 2 at EuroSign

! Hash (#) symbol for Mac UK Keyboard
keycode 12 = 3 sterling numbersign

! Mac Extended Keyboard Keys
keycode 165 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 158 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume
keycode 166 = XF86AudioMute
keycode  93 = XF86Launch0
keycode 123 = XF86Launch1
keycode 127 = XF86Launch2
keycode 128 = XF86Launch3
keycode 116 = XF86Eject

This allows the use of all of the extra keys on the keyboard. The UK 
keyboard is quite idiosyncratic; for example it does not have a "#" 
symbol (the convention is to assign alt-3 to #). X11 xkb support for the 
UK (gb) keyboard is inadequate, but I am quite content to hack around 
with the keymaps to get the result I want. But this does not work under 
FC3. If I log in, bring up a terminal and run xmodmap /etc/X11/Xmodmap, 
sometimes it will work, sometimes it will segfault. Sometimes it will 
return the following:

*** glibc detected *** double free or corruption: 0x09790868 ***
Aborted

Under no circumstances that I can induce will xmodmap successfully load 
the key mappings when invoked as part of Xsession. I have tried using 
Option  "XkbDisable" as well as manually inserting the xmodmap command 
into the Xsession script, with no success.

This is a real shame, since xmodmap is widely used, easy to understand 
and permits experimentation and hacking. Plus it's been around for a 
while. That said, I have tried to hack together an xkb configuration for 
the macintosh gb keyboard. What a horrid system of files. So far, I've 
got the following for /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/macintosh/gb:

// $XConsortium: gb /main/3 1996/08/31 12:19:51 kaleb $
// $XFree86: xc/programs/xkbcomp/symbols/gb,v 3.3 1996/12/23 07:13:25 
dawes Exp $
partial default alphanumeric_keys
xkb_symbols "basic" {

     // Describes the differences between a very simple en_US
     // keyboard and a very simple U.K. keyboard layout


     name[Group1]= "Great Britain";

     key <AE02> {        [      2,        at             ],
                         [      EuroSign                 ]       };
     key <AE03> {        [      3,        sterling       ],
                         [ numbersign                    ]       };
     key <LSGT> {        [ quoteleft,    asciitilde      ]       };

     key <KPEQ> { [ KP_Equal ] };
//  key <KPEQ> {        [ equal                         ]       };

     // End alphanumeric section

     key <RALT> {      [ Mode_switch,  Multi_key       ]       };
     modifier_map Mod3   { Mode_switch };

     include "apple(extended)"

};

I can't get everything to work yet. The multimedia keys are not 
included, and nothing I've tried will induce the keypad equals key to 
work (although xev does find it). More importantly, control-alt-F1 does 
not elicit a virtual console (although control-alt-del does bring up the 
logout dialogue, and control-alt-backspace kills the server). ctl-alt-+ 
does nothing. Also, I've noticed that combinations such as ctl-shift-A 
does not work (I use this in thunderbird as a matter of routine, so this 
is vexing).

Issue 3: pilot-xfer doesn't work. I have read that this may be due to a 
problem with kernel 2.6.9-1.681_FC3, but what a pain. The program just 
hangs after 2 or 3 seconds and the handheld hotsync software times out.