CentOS - Jan 2019 - CentOS 7.6 1810 vs. VirtualBox : bug with keyboard layout selection

Hi,

I'm currently working on my next Linux book, which will be an elementary
course about CentOS administration. I'm using VirtualBox for all the
installer screenshots.

Since CentOS has recently been upgraded to version 7.6, I thought I
might as well base all book references on this version. So I downloaded
the 7.6 1810 minimal ISO and started a fresh installation in VirtualBox.

I'm using a Swiss French keyboard layout (ch-fr or fr_CH-latin1), so one
of the first things I do in the installer is replace the default French
AZERTY keyboard (since I use the french language) by a swiss french
QWERTZ layout.

Now when I reach this dialog in the installer and try do define my new
layout, the slider in the selection window doesn't appear, and clicking
on any of the first layouts doesn't do anything, so I'm basically stuck
there.

I'm running OpenSUSE Leap 15.0 KDE on my workstation, so I tried the
same thing with the previous CentOS 7.5 1804 minimal ISO, and the
keyboard selection dialog works perfectly.

So my intuition would tell me that there's a nasty bug in the CentOS 7.6
installer. Maybe it went unnoticed, since most folks stick to the
default keyboard layout selected in their language.

Any suggestions ?

Cheers,

Niki
-- 
Microlinux - Solutions informatiques durables
7, place de l'?glise - 30730 Montpezat
Site : https://www.microlinux.fr
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Mail : info at microlinux.fr
T?l. : 04 66 63 10 32

On Thu, Jan 3, 2019 at 11:53 PM Nicolas Kovacs <info at microlinux.fr>
wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I'm currently working on my next Linux book, which will be an
elementary
> course about CentOS administration. I'm using VirtualBox for all the
> installer screenshots.
>
> Since CentOS has recently been upgraded to version 7.6, I thought I
> might as well base all book references on this version. So I downloaded
> the 7.6 1810 minimal ISO and started a fresh installation in VirtualBox.
>
> I'm using a Swiss French keyboard layout (ch-fr or fr_CH-latin1), so
one
> of the first things I do in the installer is replace the default French
> AZERTY keyboard (since I use the french language) by a swiss french
> QWERTZ layout.
>
> Now when I reach this dialog in the installer and try do define my new
> layout, the slider in the selection window doesn't appear, and clicking
> on any of the first layouts doesn't do anything, so I'm basically
stuck
> there.
>
> I'm running OpenSUSE Leap 15.0 KDE on my workstation, so I tried the
> same thing with the previous CentOS 7.5 1804 minimal ISO, and the
> keyboard selection dialog works perfectly.
>
> So my intuition would tell me that there's a nasty bug in the CentOS
7.6
> installer. Maybe it went unnoticed, since most folks stick to the
> default keyboard layout selected in their language.
>
> Any suggestions ?
>
> Cheers,
>
> Niki
There are known issues with VirtualBox and RHEL (therefore CentOS) 7.6.

(1) https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=90103
(2) https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=90267

(1) is about the GuestAdditions, so this should not affect the
installation. But you were most likely hit by (2). All the details are
in that forum thread. In short, this is caused by a bug in the 7.6
kernel (see also https://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=15570 ). It is
possible that the next update to the kernel has the fix but this
remains to be seen.

Akemi

Le 04/01/2019 ? 09:14, Akemi Yagi a ?crit?:
> There are known issues with VirtualBox and RHEL (therefore CentOS) 7.6.
> 
> (1) https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=90103
> (2) https://forums.virtualbox.org/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=90267
> 
> (1) is about the GuestAdditions, so this should not affect the
> installation. But you were most likely hit by (2). All the details are
> in that forum thread. In short, this is caused by a bug in the 7.6
> kernel (see also https://bugs.centos.org/view.php?id=15570 ). It is
> possible that the next update to the kernel has the fix but this
> remains to be seen.
OK, thanks for the clarification. Looks like this is it.

<rant> And I'm glad to begin chapter 2 of my Introduction To Linux
with
something like "Well, folks, unfortunately you can't select a custom
keyboard layout in VirtualBox because the enterprise class Linux we
talked about in chapter 1 has a bug in the kernel so for now the default
keyboard layout will have to be sufficient.</rant>

:o)

Niki

-- 
Microlinux - Solutions informatiques durables
7, place de l'?glise - 30730 Montpezat
Site : https://www.microlinux.fr
Blog : https://blog.microlinux.fr
Mail : info at microlinux.fr
T?l. : 04 66 63 10 32