Bug 2405872

Summary: Installing KDE Live with French keyboard layout results in US layout at decryption prompt and console (due to invalid "KEYMAP=fr (oss)" in vconsole.conf)
Product: [Fedora] Fedora Reporter: Adam Williamson <awilliam>
Component: anaconda-webuiAssignee: Katerina Koukiou <kkoukiou>
Status: CLOSED ERRATA QA Contact:
Severity: urgent Docs Contact:
Priority: unspecified    
Version: 43CC: a.badger, alpha, kkoukiou, kparal, lruzicka, mkolman, robatino, rvykydal
Target Milestone: ---   
Target Release: ---   
Hardware: All   
OS: Linux   
Whiteboard: openqa AcceptedBlocker
Fixed In Version: anaconda-webui-53.1^20251022g00cddf56-1.fc43 Doc Type: ---
Doc Text:
Story Points: ---
Clone Of: Environment:
Last Closed: 2025-10-23 23:54:28 UTC Type: Bug
Regression: --- Mount Type: ---
Documentation: --- CRM:
Verified Versions: Category: ---
oVirt Team: --- RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team: --- Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:
Bug Depends On:    
Bug Blocks: 2324225    

Description Adam Williamson 2025-10-22 18:14:25 UTC 
To reproduce:

1. Grab https://kojipkgs.fedoraproject.org/compose/43/Fedora-43-20251022.0/compose/KDE/x86_64/iso/Fedora-KDE-Desktop-Live-43-1.5.x86_64.iso , boot it
2. Run the installer
3. Set your keyboard layout as "French (alt.)" (in English) or "Français (variante)" (French). This is the most commonly-used French layout and the one shown as "Suggested"
4. Complete the install; encrypt data if you like (but choose a passphrase you can type in US too)
5. Examine /mnt/sysimage/etc/vconsole.conf . Observe that it says KEYMAP="fr (oss)"
6. Boot the installed system. Observe that at the decryption prompt (if you encrypted) and text consoles, US keyboard layout is used

The problem is that "fr (oss)" is an xkb-ish specifier - <layout> (<variant>) - not a valid kbd specifier. The KEYMAP value in vconsole.conf is intended for the console. It has to be the name of a kbd map. That is, it has to be a string which, if you append ".map" or ".map.gz" to it, results in the name of a file which can be found under /usr/lib/kbd/keymaps . In this case, the correct value would be "fr-oss", to find /usr/lib/kbd/keymaps/xkb/fr-oss.map.gz . There is no "fr (oss).map" or "fr (oss).map.gz" file, so trying to load "fr (oss)" as a console keymap fails, so we fall back to US (which is always the default).

This will be broken in any case where anaconda's xkb-ish specifier doesn't happen to match an existing kbd layout, which I think will be all cases where the xkb-ish specifier includes a variant.

This doesn't seem to affect Workstation (which uses a different codepath, as it doesn't use webui's built-in layout picker) - that writes a correct /etc/vconsole.conf with KEYMAP="fr-oss" .

This did also affect the previous RC, 1.4 - there's just so much going on that I hadn't managed to notice and investigate it till now :(

Proposing as a Final blocker as a violation of If a particular keyboard layout has been configured for the system, that keyboard layout must be used: ... When unlocking encrypted storage volumes during boot (but see footnotes) ... When logging in at a console" - https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Fedora_43_Final_Release_Criteria#Keyboard_layout_configuration .
Comment 1 Adam Williamson 2025-10-22 18:24:51 UTC 
F42 KDE was not affected by this because it used GTK UI. Rawhide is not affected by this because it's affected by https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=2404635 instead - current Rawhide (with anaconda-webui 54) always sets the console layout to us.
Comment 2 Fedora Update System 2025-10-23 02:10:33 UTC 
FEDORA-2025-d500e0472e (anaconda-webui-53.1^20251022g00cddf56-1.fc43) has been submitted as an update to Fedora 43.
https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2025-d500e0472e
Comment 3 Adam Williamson 2025-10-23 02:13:25 UTC 
+3 in https://pagure.io/fedora-qa/blocker-review/issue/2004 , marking accepted blocker (provisionally, this is mainly so we can do another RC with my fix).
Comment 4 Kamil Páral 2025-10-23 08:37:25 UTC 
I can confirm this problem with cz-qwerty layout in RC1.5 (it's written down as "cz (qwerty)" in vconsole.conf, and the system uses "us" instead), and confirm the fix in RC1.6 (written down as "cz-qwerty").

Side note: Disk unlock prompt surprisingly still displays just "cz", but it's actually "cz-qwerty".
Comment 5 Lukas Ruzicka 2025-10-23 09:28:12 UTC 
I can verify this for French, password works using the French layout.
Comment 6 Adam Williamson 2025-10-23 15:17:46 UTC 
yeah, the unlock indicator is a little odd. Another thing is that in RC-1.5, where this is broken, the indicator says 'fr', even though the effective layout is us.

I suspect what the indicator does is just read the value out of the vconsole.conf file (so it doesn't account for the value actually being invalid) and split it on separators (not sure why)?
Comment 7 Fedora Update System 2025-10-23 22:26:46 UTC 
FEDORA-2025-d500e0472e has been pushed to the Fedora 43 testing repository.
Soon you'll be able to install the update with the following command:
`sudo dnf upgrade --enablerepo=updates-testing --refresh --advisory=FEDORA-2025-d500e0472e`
You can provide feedback for this update here: https://bodhi.fedoraproject.org/updates/FEDORA-2025-d500e0472e

See also https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/QA:Updates_Testing for more information on how to test updates.
Comment 8 Fedora Update System 2025-10-23 23:54:28 UTC 
FEDORA-2025-d500e0472e (anaconda-webui-53.1^20251022g00cddf56-1.fc43) has been pushed to the Fedora 43 stable repository.
If problem still persists, please make note of it in this bug report.