Gnome Keyboard layout changes are lost after reboot/-start

I have a Toshiba Satellite with American English keyboard. I need to use the
accents and I can do it this way: System > Preferences > Keyboard and change
Keyboard Model to Toshiba Satellite S3000. Keyboard Layout I changed to U.S.
English International (with dead keys). Then the accents are working fine, just
like it should. I have an applet in the panel showing which layout am I using at
the moment, and it shows USA*. BUT WHEN I REBOOT, the accents stop working. The
applet then shows just USA and if I go with the mouse hover it, I see U.S.
English International (with dead keys). Well, if it really was this keyboard, it
should be working just like it was before the reboot. I checked everything and
it seems the correct keyboard was chosen, anyway it is working as a normal U.S.
English keyboard would.

Here are some examples of what happen with a non-dead keys keyboard:
'a 'e 'i 'o 'u ~a ~o "u
All those accents should be over the letters! I have to clear configs and do
everything again to get it to work...
See how the letters would be with the correct keyboard:
á é í ó ú ã õ ü

I believe that's a bug.

Hi, is this still a problem with Dapper or Edgy?

As described in the previous comments, your report lacks the information we need to investigate the problem further. We'll close this report for now - please reopen it if you can give us the missing information.

I have a dvorak layout in Hardy. Every time I start X, it is reset to qwerty although the System|Preferences|Keyboard|Layouts still shows "USA Dvorak".
To fix this, I remove "USA Dvorak", choose "+Add", and add "USA/Dvorak". Now I can type in Dvorak again. I have to do this every single time I start X. The setting is not being remembered, or it is not being honored at startup.

It acts exactly (in 2008) as described above (in 2005).

It appears that gnome get its keyboard settings primarily from X (!)

/etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Section "InputDevice"
    Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
    Driver "kbd"
    Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
    Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
    Option "XkbLayout" "dvorak"
EndSection

If you put the correct settings in xorg.conf, gnome is not misbehaving anymore.

I have the same problem; If I use the keyboard preferences tool and add the Greek layout, at the next restart i can click and switch the layout on the panel, but I cannot actually write in Greek. I don't know if it's supposed to, but when I do use the panel preferences and add the layout, xorg.conf is NOT modified.

Anw, the solution above (manually modifying xorf.conf) does the trick for now. I am sure though that I had tried this before and after a while it gets reset again.

Actually, I have a more general problem that I think is relevant: I lose other personal setting at every restart as well. The main gnome panel moves from where I want it, and the most irritating of all, the Gnome Keyring prompt comes up, even if I have already install the libpam--blah blah and HAD (just once) the chance to tick "Authenticate automatically on login"... (something like that).

This is surely a bug. Even if some people could work their ways around it. What is the purpose of GUI if you are not able to use it?

I had the problem with an upgrade-install of ubuntu 8.04 over a very-well-working 7.10. I decided to clean install 8.04 to see if this fixed the problem.

It actually worked fine for a couple of days I think. The only thing I modified was the bluetooth scripts to enable use of my bluetooth mouse. Does anyone think it's possible this thingy interferes with gnome?

For the record, I search the web and found something about changing home directory personal settings files ownership. Didnt work either....

Still searching!

There are several reports of this bug resurfacing in Hardy. I've included a brief discussion and theory about the cause in bug #234368 (now marked as a duplicate of this bug).