Bug#486330: just saw this now

[Josip Rodin <joy@debbugs.entuzijast.net>]

On Tue, Aug 04, 2009 at 05:50:49PM +0200, Josip Rodin wrote:
> I just started my machine and X a few minutes ago, after no obvious
> X-related upgrades, and my keyboard is pretty broken, many keys and
> combinations no longer work. Xorg.0.log says:
> 
> ...
> (EE) Error compiling keymap (server-0)
> (EE) XKB: Couldn't compile keymap

> % setxkbmap
> Error loading new keyboard description

Oh, ffs, I figured it out. The machine had no free space (for users) on
the root partition, more exactly the partition holding /var/tmp, and yet
these XKB tools didn't seem to think that the inability to write files
was a useful thing to report. Let's go with the generic error message
instead, yay. >:<

It's easy to reproduce, for example:

% sudo chattr +i /var/tmp/
% setxkbmap  
Error loading new keyboard description
% sudo chattr -i /var/tmp/
% setxkbmap               
% 

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