Version:            (using KDE 4.1.4)
Compiler:          gcc-4.3 
OS:                Linux
Installed from:    Ubuntu Packages


  Systemsettings>Keyboard&mouse>keyboard shorcuts (The third option, I am not sure about the english original).

When clicking on this option, the system takes some long time to respond.  After this long time, everything looks fine and one can change the keyboard shorcuts, and import or export the keyboard scheme.  There is an 'apply' button which is not available (inactive).
 
Clicking on import scheme lets a new popup window appear on which one can choose keyboard scheme and path for it.  The default schemes can be selected and the path automatically appears.  This window works perfectly because I did put some other scheme file on the corresponding folder and it appears there.  So one clicks ok and the window disappears and one is back on the keyboard shortcuts section.

  1.  The selected keyboard layout is not visible.  This would be rather a wish, but I am just mentioning it here.
  2.  The apply button is still inactive.  As one has made changes, it should be active.  Therefore there's no way of applying the configuration.

Also, as the scheme files .kksrc are all on /usr/share/kde4/apps/kcmkeys/ , I tried to edit the files there directly.  To do so I simply made my desired .kksrc file and overwrote all the files there, keeping the names.  After restart, everything is just the same.  Therefore, the used scheme is none of those, (which you surely know, just added so that you see my reasoning).

Running systemsettings as root (in my case 'sudo systemsettings') throws the same results except for a relevant thing:  When you try to access the keyboard layouts part, instead of getting blocked for a while, the program shows a popup with the message: 

Fehler bei der Verbindung zum Dienst für globale Kurzbefehle
Meldung: No such object path '/KdedGlobalAccel'
Fehler: org.freedesktop.DBus.Error.UnknownObject

(Failure on connection to service for notification(?) of global shorcuts: No such object path...etc.)

When you click ok on the error popup the shorcuts part has disappeared and (roughly) only the buttons for importing / exporting scheme remain.

Curious thing is that (as a normal user) you can actually change some keyboard shortcuts, but if you change the schema afterwards your changes get actually erased.  

I can't think of other tests now, but I would be glad if someone could point me to the configuration file which the system is actually using, if it is not hard-coded, so that I can edit it for now.

I include here some of the console output (the parts I think might be relevant) for the case when I run systemsettings as root (Note: Tastatur & Maus means Keyboard & Mouse):

systemsettings(4668) MainWindow::selectionChanged: Selected item:  "Tastatur & Maus"
systemsettings(4668) MainWindow::selectionChanged: Comment:        ""
systemsettings(4668) MainWindow::selectionChanged: Needs root privs: false
systemsettings(4668) MainWindow::selectionChanged: adding
systemsettings(4668) MainWindow::selectionChanged: adding
systemsettings(4668) MainWindow::selectionChanged: adding
systemsettings(4668): Couldn't start knotify from knotify4.desktop:  "KDEInit kann „/usr/bin/knotify4“ nicht starten."

systemsettings(4668) KGlobalShortcutsEditor::undo: Undo the changes


Short note: "KDEInit can not start "/usr/bin/knotify4""

knotify4 is in the indicated path, though.  Watching ksysguard I observe both knotify and knotify4 are running.

Hope this report is useful.  I am available for experiments or further information.  Best wishes.