[PLUG] xmodmap Stopped Working

Rich Shepard rshepard at appl-ecosys.com
Mon Apr 7 12:53:36 UTC 2014


   Toward the end of last week xmodmap stopped working. That is, the file
~/.Xmodmap which swaps the left control and caps lock keys is no longer being
invoked when I start X. It's worked for more than a decade-and-a-half and I
have not found how to get it working again. Help is appreciated.

   In ~/.xinitrc are these definitions (there are no system versions so I
modified those lines to all point to $HOME):

usermodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap
/usr/bin/modmap $HOME/.Xmodmap
userresources=$HOME/.Xresources
sysresources=$HOME/.Xresources
sysmodmap=$HOME/.Xmodmap

...

if [ -f $sysmodmap ]; then
     xmodmap $sysmodmap
fi

if [ -f $usermodmap ]; then
     xmodmap $usermodmap
fi

   and I added this last week:

# Make certain that .Xmodmap loads
if [ -x /usr/bin/xmodmap ]; then
  /usr/bin/xmodmap /home/rshepard/.Xmodmap
fi

   But, none of these invocations are working.

   I've no idea why .Xmodmap is not being read but would like to fix the
issue. I know there's a way to change the keymap used by loadkeys for
swapping control and caps lock on consoles (not virtual terminals, but the
consoles), but I don't know if the same solution or an equivalent works for
xmodmap.

   Ideas and suggestions wanted!

Rich




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