Login theme in 10.04

[Z.K.]

I have a touch screen and I want to enable the onboard onscreen keyboard during login. From some instructions that refer to Ubuntu versions below 9.04, I need to enable the plain theme for the keyboard to display during login, but 10.04 no longer has a login preferences GUI so how do I do this in 10.04?

Or, does anyone know of another way to do this? I set the Assistive properties to display the keyboard on login, but nothing is displayed.

:(

[sisco311]

According to the documentation (http://library.gnome.org/admin/gdm/), you have to set the value of the /desktop/gnome/applications/at/screen_keyboard_enabled gconf key to true:

sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --type bool --set /desktop/gnome/applications/at/screen_keyboard_enabled "true"

[Z.K.]

According to the documentation (http://library.gnome.org/admin/gdm/), you have to set the value of the /desktop/gnome/applications/at/screen_keyboard_enabled gconf key to true:

sudo -u gdm gconftool-2 --type bool --set /desktop/gnome/applications/at/screen_keyboard_enabled "true"

Thanks, that worked. Now, if only I could figure out how to keep my touch screen settings at login. Right now I am setting them in the user profile. I would like to set them system wide and before login, but I have not figured out how to do that as yet.

Thanks again.

:D

[sisco311]

You're welcome!

I'm not familiar with touch screens. What procedure do you have to follow to set it up?

[Z.K.]

You're welcome!

I'm not familiar with touch screens. What procedure do you have to follow to set it up?

I found a generic program called xinput_calibrator and seems to work fairly well. I just add the xinput command with its arguments to the /etc/Profile file and it remembers the value after the user logs in. I am not that familiar though with how Ubuntu boots and where I would put these values so that they would be preserved at the login screen. I would like them to be system wide, independent of a login.

[jtarin]

Try placing the command in the /etc/rc.local file.

[sisco311]

Upstart often executes the rc.local file too soon. You may have to add a sleep before the command:

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

sleep 8 # wait 8 seconds
command [OPTIONS]

exit 0


or write an Upstart job.

/etc/init/touchscreen.conf:


# touch screen
#
# xinput_calibrator

description "whatever"

start on starting gdm

stop on runlevel [016]

script
command [OPTIONS]
end script


But, if you have to run it as a non-privileged user, then create a .desktop file in GDM's autostart directory.

/usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/touchscreen.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=touchscreen
Comment=xinput_calibrator
Exec=command [OPTIONS]
Terminal=false
Type=Application

[Z.K.]

Upstart often executes the rc.local file too soon. You may have to add a sleep before the command:

#!/bin/sh -e
#
# rc.local
#
# This script is executed at the end of each multiuser runlevel.
# Make sure that the script will "exit 0" on success or any other
# value on error.
#
# In order to enable or disable this script just change the execution
# bits.
#
# By default this script does nothing.

sleep 8 # wait 8 seconds
command [OPTIONS]

exit 0


or write an Upstart job.

/etc/init/touchscreen.conf:


# touch screen
#
# xinput_calibrator

description "whatever"

start on starting gdm

stop on runlevel [016]

script
command [OPTIONS]
end script


But, if you have to run it as a non-privileged user, then create a .desktop file in GDM's autostart directory.

/usr/share/gdm/autostart/LoginWindow/touchscreen.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=touchscreen
Comment=xinput_calibrator
Exec=command [OPTIONS]
Terminal=false
Type=Application


Thanks for the help, but that did not work either. The touch screen is still not calibrated at the login screen.