Bug 2234516

Right now Anaconda behaves as this: 

- taking the currently used layout as vconsole keymap (skipping ibus because we can't use them)
- if none could be used (it's ibus) we will take next one
- if the list is empty we are fallbacking to US English layout


As you describe the issue it seems that this is correct behavior from the Anaconda PoV but users can type passwords in Russian because only that layout is available for them because only one layout could be selected. Am I correct?

Uh....yeees? probably.

This bug report is specific to g-i-s, anyway. The question of who exactly sets the console keymap and how on the new flow is an interesting one that I haven't looked into yet, but if there are any problems there, I will file them as a separate report.

As a quick reminder: for a typical Russian installation, what we expect is for the xkb configuration to be us,ru (both US and Russian layouts configured, US first), and the kbd configuration to be ru (which will load the "legacy" internally-switchable layout with support for entering both Cyrillic and Latin characters).

There is a whole bunch of subtlety to how this actually works, which I'm initiating Ray on over at https://gitlab.gnome.org/GNOME/gnome-desktop/-/merge_requests/159 . :P

+5 in https://pagure.io/fedora-qa/blocker-review/issue/1191 , marking accepted blocker.

yes, good point about it's xkb. I had wrong assumption about this.

The vconsole keymap is now set by Anaconda during the installation in the background and I think that is correct solution but yes, it depends also on GIS how they want to solve this.

(Thanks Adam I had been meaning to report this too - though in fact I don't think ibus IMEs are particularly useful during installation anyway.)

Well, input methods no, switched layouts probably yes. But also, the intended workflow for Workstation from now on is that whatever you select in the g-i-s you see on live boot carries *through* the install all the way into the installed system. So it is important.

FEDORA-2023-45122b156d has been submitted as an update to Fedora 39. https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2023-45122b156d

I believe https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2023-45122b156d should *mostly* cover this. There are still a few wrinkles. Testing an install in Rawhide, this is how it goes:

* Boot to live g-i-s flow, select Russian on first page
* On second page (keyboard), Russian is pre-selected (good)
* On hitting Next, the input switcher is now visible (good) with 'ru' and 'en' options (good); 'ru' is selected (probably bad, see later)
* anaconda runs in Russian (well, with a lot of missing translations) (good)
* On booting the installed system, g-i-s shows language and keyboard pages again (bad - https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2234522 ), the input switcher is visible (good), with 'ru' and 'en' options (good), 'en' is selected (good, but possibly unexpected; this may be because of something anaconda did); /etc/vconsole.conf at this point contains `KEYMAP="us"` (bad, not sure why that happens) and no `XKBLAYOUT` setting (not sure if this is bad)
* Russian is pre-selected on the language page (good)
* On proceeding to the keyboard page, English (US) (translated to Russian, obvs) is the default selection (bad)
* If I continue with English (US) selected, when I reach the desktop, both layouts are still available with en as the default (good) and /etc/vconsole.conf contains `KEYMAP="us"` (bad) and `XKBLAYOUT=us,ru` (good); on a reboot, again, both layouts are configured, en is the default (good)
* If I instead select Russian - which is kinda the natural thing to do, I guess - then vconsole.conf contains `KEYMAP=ru` (good) and `XKBLAYOUT=ru,us` (bad); when I reach the desktop, both layouts are present but ru is the default (bad), and the same on a reboot (bad)

So neither path *quite* does the right thing, and there's an awkward UI question involved. Not running g-i-s a second time will make things simpler, when we can fix that.

On the topic of which layout should be default: see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1039185 . There is a *lot* of feedback from actual Russian users (and one person in Lebanon) that the user expectation is that the US layout should be the default and you should have to switch to the 'native' layout. This is because stuff you do immediately after boot tends to be with Latin characters: entering usernames, passwords and encryption passphrases. Since that bug, this is what anaconda has always attempted to do.

The "ideal" behaviour here, I believe, would be:

* Boot to live g-i-s flow, select Russian on first page
* Second page should default to an option which configures both US and Russian layouts, with US first, but the list entry selected should not be confusing...somehow
* anaconda should run in Russian
* On boot after install, both layouts should be available, US should be selected, and g-i-s should *not* ask for location and keyboard layout again
* vconsole.conf should specify `KEYMAP="ru"` or `KEYMAP=ru`, *not* us, and consoles should actually use the 'ru' kbd layout, which is an internally-switched layout that inputs Latin characters in a US-like layout by default, Cyrillic characters when switched
* vconsole.conf should specify `XKBLAYOUT=us,ru`

By comparison, this is how it works in Fedora 38 Workstation live:

* Boot to a live desktop with only 'us' layout
* Run anaconda, pick Russia as your location; the GNOME input switcher is not available at this point, but anaconda shows both layouts are configured, with US before Russian
* The live installer uses 'us' layout and you cannot switch within the installer (you would have to go to Control Center and set up the layouts you want there manually)
* On booting the installed system, both layouts are configured and available in the switcher, with en as the default, as you go through g-i-s, which does not show any keyboard config screen; before g-i-s completes, vconsole.conf says `KEYMAP="ru"`, nothing about `XKBLAYOUT`
* On completing g-i-s, again both layouts are available and US is default; vconsole.conf hasn't changed
* On reboot, at gdm and after logging in, both layouts are available and US is default

On traditional installer images, it's much the same except once you select Russian in the installer, both layouts are available inside the installer and you can switch between them. I don't know how we actually get the right config in GNOME since anaconda never sets XKBLAYOUT, but somehow we do, it must set it some other way.

Filed https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2236343 for the outstanding issues here.

FEDORA-2023-45122b156d has been pushed to the Fedora 39 stable repository.
If problem still persists, please make note of it in this bug report.

Looking forward to test this too 🙏

Thank you, Ray and Adam - great work!