Arch Linux

beachcoder

Member

Registered: 2009-10-08

Posts: 130

AltGr not working on ssh X-forwarding

Hello there,

I found some places on the net which handled nearly a solution, but I can't get it to work or find the places they directed to.
Well, the problem: I'm connecting from an Arch Linux machine to an Arch Linux machine using ssh via xterm. X11 forwarding runs perfect, except that my AltGr-key is not working. Because I am german, I need this key to produce characters like { or }, which is very important for C programming .

When I'm in vi on my remote server, AltGr works with no problems. But any windowed application I run via ssh -X forwarding does not handle the AltGr-key. When I'm directly on my remote machine and run X and an application, AltGr even works well.

So this must be an ssh -X issue or something like that - any ideas?

sas

Member

Registered: 2009-11-24

Posts: 155

Re: AltGr not working on ssh X-forwarding

Same here.
(In fact, it's not only the AltGr key, it seems to disregard all special "XkbOptions" in xorg.conf altogether...)

However, when using ssh -Y ("trusted X11 forwarding") instead of ssh -X ("X11 forwarding"), it works as expected.

I have no idea what the technical meanings of these switches are, exactly, but "ssh -X" seems to somehow result in very limited X11 functionality, whereas "-Y" seems to provide the full functionality.

For example, in my case, running xdpyinfo in a ssh -X shell lists only the following two X11 extensions:

BIG-REQUESTS
XC-MISC

Whereas running the same command in a ssh -Y shell lists 28 X11 extensions:

BIG-REQUESTS
Composite
DAMAGE
DOUBLE-BUFFER
DPMS
DRI2
GLX
Generic Event Extension
MIT-SCREEN-SAVER
MIT-SHM
RANDR
RECORD
RENDER
SECURITY
SGI-GLX
SHAPE
SYNC
X-Resource
XC-MISC
XFIXES
XFree86-DGA
XFree86-VidModeExtension
XINERAMA
XInputExtension
XKEYBOARD
XTEST
XVideo
XVideo-MotionCompensation

Notably, the "XKEYBOARD" extension (which I believe is responsible for special "XkbOptions", and possibly also the AltGr key in the "de" layout), is only present in the second listing.

---

my AUR packages ~~ my community contributions

skunktrader

Member

From: Brisbane, Australia

Registered: 2010-02-14

Posts: 1,543

Re: AltGr not working on ssh X-forwarding

Are you using keys to authenticate logins?