xorg error : Failed to activate core devices

[Peter Hutterer]

On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 08:12:31AM -0700, Dan Nicholson wrote:
> On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 4:53 AM, Peter Hutterer
> <peter.hutterer at who-t.net> wrote:
> > On Sat, Oct 10, 2009 at 02:28:03PM +0800, yue315012-reg at yahoo.com.cn wrote:
> >> I compiled Xorg 1.7.0 for my Geexbox. When start Xorg, it always said
> >>   (EE) Error compiling keymap (server-0)
> >>   (EE) XKB: Couldn't compile keymap
> >>   XKB: Failed to compile keymap
> >>   Keyboard initialization failed. This could be a missing or incorrect setup of xkeyboard-config.
> >
> > this could be caused a missing or incorrect setup of xkeyboard-config :) the
> > easiest way to fix that is to install xkeyboard-config into the same prefix
> > as the server.
> >
> > otherwise, grep for XKB_BASE_DIRECTORY in config.log, make sure
> > xkeyboard-config is installed there.
> > grep for XKB_COMPILED_DIR in config.log, make sure this directory is
> > writeable.
> > grep for XKB_BIN_DIRECTORY, make sure xkbcomp is in that directory.
> 
> For this last one, is there any reason why we don't do
> AC_PATH_PROG(XKBCOMP, xkbcomp, '${bindir}/xkbcomp') in the server? I
> know that xkbcomp should die a fiery death, but in the meantime I
> think that would make the user experience nicer.

make sense to me.

The only issue I can think of is that xkbcomp has the default xkbconfig
search path compiled in and if PATH isn't set before running configure on
the server, the server may use the "wrong" xkbcomp and thus the wrong
xkeyboard-config.

A rather esoteric case, but I've been bitten by that a few times.

Cheers,
  Peter