cygwin/xfree86 and keyboards

[thomas graichen <list-cygwin dot xfree at spoiled dot org>]

after trying a lot of things maybe someone here may help me: i want
to use a german (i.e. non-us = non-default) keyboard with the cygwin
xfree86 server (latest cygwin and xfree86 4.1.0 for cygwin btw.) and
i want it to be set on the _xserver side_ then xdmcp querying another
machine ... so the typical "xmodmap xyz" in the user xsession startup
files of the queried server does not work well ... i now tried the
following scenarios:

* start xserver and in the startup scripts something like xmodmap,
  setxkbmap or xkbcomp - all works fine for a local xserver but
  not if i query an xdm via xdmcp - then it works sometimes but
  most often everything is set fine before i get the xdm screen and
  very short before it appears the xserver restarts once (forgetting
  all the keymap settings done before - even if restarted with the
  "-noreset" option) ... this is pretty well reproducable ... it
  does not seem to happen if i let the xdm manage my display (i.e.
  without the xdmcp query) ... so all in all this does not work

* try to load a different keymap via the "-xkbmap" or "-xkbdb" cmd
  line options to XWin ... i searched the whole web and tried a lot
  of things but was not able to find a syntax and/or fileformat which
  was accepted for those commandline-options - it always ends with
  "error opening keymap file - reverting to defaults" ... i also did
  not get this to work on a linux-system too - so it does not seem
  to be a cygwin specific problem ... does anyone know how, in which
  syntax and with which files these option are to be called? ... all
  in all also this did not work

* while stracing the xserver on a linux-machine (btw. i was not able
  to strace XWin in cygwin - it always ends with an error 3 - but
  tracing as such - for instance an "ls" works fine - any idea?) i
  found out the it also looks for a file called

    /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb/X0-config.keyboard

  i searched the net and even found one example - this way i got it
  working on a linux machine with an XFree server (4.1.0 too) and
  a german keyboard (without any entries in the XF86Confi file) but
  the same try under cygwin did not work - it looks like the file
  is ignored (can't check due to not working strace) although a
  strings of the XWin binary shows the strings for this config file
  in it like in the linux binary ... so also no success here

can anyone help me out on any of those three ways? - i would really
like to get this working in a clean way ... aside from all that
trouble i must admit that this cygwin/xfree86 works pretty well
and is some really cool piece of software ... good work

a lot of thanks in advance

t

-- 
thomas graichen <tgr@spoiled.org> ... perfection is reached, not
when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no
longer anything to take away. --- antoine de saint-exupery