Installing the Onboard on-screen keyboard in Gentoo Linux

Onboard on-screen keyboard configured with the British English layout, Droid theme and international character selection enabled for the long-press action

The most sophisticated and polished virtual keyboard I have seen so far in Linux is Onboard, the on-screen keyboard previously provided in Ubuntu prior to the switch to GNOME 3. The current version of Onboard is 1.4.1 and it can be installed and used in other Linux distributions and desktop environments. Thanks to Gentoo Linux user wjn an ebuild is available in the wjn-overlay overlay and can be installed from there via Portage. However, I prefer to use a local overlay so I copied the ebuild to my local overlay and installed it from there instead. Here is what I did to install app-accessibility/onboard in the Gentoo Stable installation running KDE Plasma 5 on my Clevo W230SS laptop:

1. I first made sure the preferred Python interpreter was selected (I should have done that when the Gentoo Linux developers recently replaced Python 3.5 with Python 3.6 in the default Python targets for Gentoo installations):

root # grep PYTHON /etc/portage/make.conf
PYTHON_TARGETS="python2_7 python3_6"
PYTHON_SINGLE_TARGET="python3_6"
root # eselect python list
Available Python interpreters, in order of preference:
  [1]   python2.7
  [2]   python3.5 (uninstalled)
  [3]   python3.4
  [4]   python3.6 (fallback)
root # eselect python set 4
root # eselect python list 
Available Python interpreters, in order of preference:
  [1]   python3.6
  [2]   python2.7
  [3]   python3.5 (uninstalled)
  [4]   python3.4

2. Then I copied the ebuild to my local overlay:

root # mkdir -p /usr/local/portage/app-accessibility/onboard/files
root # cd /usr/local/portage/app-accessibility/onboard/files/
root # wget https://bitbucket.org/wjn/wjn-overlay/raw/5d7fe162af7c0cde9b401a9a30fb3ab8b2b65e3d/app-accessibility/onboard/files/# onboard-1.4.1-remove-duplicated-docs.patch
root # cd ..
root # wget wget https://bitbucket.org/wjn/wjn-overlay/raw/5d7fe162af7c0cde9b401a9a30fb3ab8b2b65e3d/app-accessibility/onboard/onboard-1.4.1.ebuild
root # ebuild onboard-1.4.1.ebuild manifest

3. As I am using using Gentoo Stable I unmasked the ebuild by keyword:

root # nano /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/onboard
root # cat /etc/portage/package.accept_keywords/onboard
=app-accessibility/onboard-1.4.1 **

4. Then I installed the package:

root # emerge onboard
root # eix onboard
[I] app-accessibility/onboard [1]
     Available versions:  (~)1.4.1^m {PYTHON_TARGETS="python3_5 python3_6"}
     Installed versions:  1.4.1^m(15:28:57 25/06/18)(PYTHON_TARGETS="python3_6 -python3_4 -python3_5")
     Homepage:            https://launchpad.net/onboard
     Description:         Onscreen keyboard for everybody who can't use a hardware keyboard

[1] "local_overlay" /usr/local/portage

Icons for Onboard and Onboard Settings were added to the KDE Application Launcher’s menu (Applications > Utilities) and they can be launched from there or by entering the command ‘onboard‘ in a Konsole window under the user’s account.

5. The only thing that did not work ‘out of the box’ in KDE Plasma 5.12.5 in Gentoo was selecting ‘Help’ from the pop-up menu displayed by clicking on the Onboard icon on the Plasma 5 Panel:

FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: ‘/usr/bin/yelp’: ‘/usr/bin/yelp’

This was simply because the package gnome-extra/yelp had not been installed in my KDE installation. Now, I could have just installed it separately:

root # emerge yelp

but I chose intead to edit the onboard ebuild to add yelp to the list of runtime dependencies:

RDEPEND="${COMMON_DEPEND}
        app-accessibility/at-spi2-core
        app-text/iso-codes
        gnome-extra/mousetweaks
        gnome-extra/yelp
        x11-libs/libxkbfile"

and I then re-installed the package, which then automatically installed yelp and its dependencies:

root # ebuild onboard-1.4.1.ebuild manifest
root # emerge onboard

Onboard is a nice utility, and I hope its developers continue to maintain and develop it even though Ubuntu now uses the GNOME 3 on-screen keyboard instead, as it can be used in other desktop environments and in other Linux distributions.

Lubuntu 18.04 ‘Gave up waiting for suspend/resume device’

Software Updater in Lubuntu 17.10 recently prompted me to upgrade the OS to 18.04 LTS, and I clicked on ‘Yes, Upgrade Now’. The upgrade was performed and I was able to boot the PC into 18.04, login and access the Desktop as usual. However, I noticed a new message ‘Gave up waiting for suspend/resume device‘ was displayed on TTY1.

Now, I recalled that the Lubuntu 17.10 Installer had created a swap file rather than a swap partition when I installed Lubuntu, as confirmed in the output listed below:

user $ sudo blkid
[sudo] password for fitzcarraldo: 
/dev/sda1: UUID="3602-BD57" TYPE="vfat" PARTLABEL="EFI System Partition" PARTUUID="72b3693e-b81f-7299-84fb-bf3781bef43d"
/dev/sda2: UUID="afe17116-26fa-4169-b2d9-fb6ac8afc63c" TYPE="ext4" PARTUUID="738fed17-293d-832f-c7a4-e83471fe8ca6"

user $ swapon
NAME      TYPE SIZE USED PRIO
/swapfile file   2G   0B   -2
user $ ls /swapfile 
/swapfile

The initramfs installed by upgrading to Lubuntu 18.04 expects a swap partition in order to resume from hibernation:

user $ lsinitramfs /initrd.img | grep resume
scripts/local-premount/resume
bin/resume
conf/conf.d/resume

And, when I regenerated the initramfs files for the three kernel images in the /boot directory, I could see from the terminal output that the update-initramfs tool was expecting a swap partition:

user $ sudo update-initramfs -u -k all
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-23-generic
W: initramfs-tools configuration sets RESUME=UUID=7b4cb3c5-4c17-42ae-be3c-cc35d31fe287
W: but no matching swap device is available.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-22-generic
W: initramfs-tools configuration sets RESUME=UUID=7b4cb3c5-4c17-42ae-be3c-cc35d31fe287
W: but no matching swap device is available.
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-43-generic
W: initramfs-tools configuration sets RESUME=UUID=7b4cb3c5-4c17-42ae-be3c-cc35d31fe287
W: but no matching swap device is available.

I had a look in the file /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume and found that it had indeed been configured to expect a swap partition, although I have no idea where that UUID came from, as it was not for any of the partitions on this PC:

user $ cat /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume
RESUME=UUID=7b4cb3c5-4c17-42ae-be3c-cc35d31fe287

So I edited the contents of the configuration file to point to the swap file /swapfile instead of a non-existent partition:

user $ cat /etc/initramfs-tools/conf.d/resume
#RESUME=UUID=7b4cb3c5-4c17-42ae-be3c-cc35d31fe287
RESUME=/swapfile

Then I regenerated the initramfs files for the three kernel images currently in /boot on the PC:

user $ sudo update-initramfs -u -k all
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-23-generic
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.15.0-22-generic
update-initramfs: Generating /boot/initrd.img-4.13.0-43-generic

As you can see above, there were no longer any messages that ‘no matching swap device is available‘. And, when I rebooted the PC, the message ‘Gave up waiting for suspend/resume device‘ was no longer displayed on TTY1. All good again, although it’s a pity the Lubuntu Installer did not create a swap partition so that the installation could be put into hibernation. With a swap file, hibernation is not possible.

Update (14 July 2018): Actually, it is possible to hibernate if the installation has a swap file instead of a swap partition – see my latest post: Configuring Lubuntu 18.04 to enable hibernation using a swap file.