It may help figuring out what is going on if you can report what the variations on the setxkbmap command are and what variations on the error result.
~/MyDocs/bin/bluetooth_keyboard $ whoami user ~/MyDocs/bin/bluetooth_keyboard $ echo $DISPLAY :0.0 ~/MyDocs/bin/bluetooth_keyboard $ hildon-im-xkbtool --list ID 0, Name: "Virtual core pointer" ID 1, Name: "Virtual core keyboard" ID 2, Name: "TSC2005 touchscreen" ID 3, Name: "omap_twl4030keypad" ID 4, Name: "00:1D:82:02:7D:45" ID 5, Name: "Think Outside Keyboard" ~/MyDocs/bin/bluetooth_keyboard $ xkbcomp -i 5 :0.0 keymap-before.txt ~/MyDocs/bin/bluetooth_keyboard $ hildon-im-xkbtool -g Internal keyboard: Model: nokiarx51 Layout: us Delay: 600 Interval: 50 External keyboard: Model: nokiasu8w Layout: us Delay: 600 Interval: 50 ~/MyDocs/bin/bluetooth_keyboard $ ls -la /usr/share/X11/xkb-chinook/ drwxr-xr-x 9 root root 1064 Jan 10 17:59 . drwxr-xr-x 5 root root 504 Jan 5 11:19 .. drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 1144 Jan 5 11:19 compat -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 841 Oct 10 2007 compat.dir drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 224 Jan 5 11:19 geometry -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 168 Oct 10 2007 geometry.dir drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 416 Jan 5 11:19 keycodes -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 298 Oct 10 2007 keycodes.dir drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 704 Jan 5 11:19 rules drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 360 Jan 5 11:19 semantics -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 103 Oct 10 2007 semantics.dir drwxr-xr-x 3 root root 2424 Jan 5 11:19 symbols -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 5544 Oct 10 2007 symbols.dir drwxr-xr-x 2 root root 944 Jan 5 11:19 types -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 624 Oct 10 2007 types.dir ~/MyDocs/bin/bluetooth_keyboard $ setxkbmap -v 10 -device 5 -I -I/usr/share/X11/xkb-chinook -rules base -model pc105 -layout us Setting verbose level to 10 locale is C Warning! Multiple definitions of rules file Using command line, ignoring X server Warning! Multiple definitions of keyboard model Using command line, ignoring X server Warning! Multiple definitions of keyboard layout Using command line, ignoring X server Applied rules from base: model: pc105 layout: us Trying to build keymap using the following components: keycodes: evdev+aliases(qwerty) types: complete compat: complete symbols: pc+us geometry: pc(pc105) Error loading new keyboard description <Pressed a few keys on the internal keyboard...> ~/MyDocs/bin/bluetooth_keyboard $ xkbcomp -i 5 :0.0 keymap-after.txt $ diff keymap-before.txt keymap-after.txt ~/MyDocs/bin/bluetooth_keyboard $ hildon-im-xkbtool -g Internal keyboard: Model: nokiarx51 Layout: us Delay: 600 Interval: 50 External keyboard: Model: nokiasu8w Layout: us Delay: 600 Interval: 50 ~/MyDocs/bin/bluetooth_keyboard $