Confconsole Keyboard switching plugin not working

[JedMeister]

It's been bought to my attention that code that the Confconsole Keyboard switching plugin runs does not actually change the keyboard mapping...!

[JoeH82]

Same here, would like to change my keyboard to german layout, as i need to enter some "Umlaute".

'dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration' on console is also not working

[JedMeister]

@JoeH82 - thanks for posting.

Did you read through my post on our forums? That outlines what I believe should fix it (but I don't ahve a non-US international keyboard to test with).

To summarise, I think that installing console-setup should be the missing piece.

Then run dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration.

Then finally; udevadm trigger --subsystem-match=input --action=change and fingers crossed, that should be it...

I.e.

apt update
apt install -y console-setup
dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
udevadm trigger --subsystem-match=input --action=change

Please let me know if that works.

[DaLynxx]

I'm running Proxmox. Proxmox have prepared easy access to TurnKey LXC containers. However, since I live in Sweden I wanted the Swedish keyboard layout. Can't get it to work. I've tried

• the LXC container in Proxmox
• Proxmox VM installing from
  ** turnkey-ansible-17.1-bullseye-amd64.iso
  ** turnkey-ansible-16.1-buster-amd64.iso

They behave somewhat differently. For the Isos installs the the "keyboard" configuration setup runs. (at least the first boot) However, even though the settings end up correctly in /etc/default/keyboard it makes no difference for the Proxmox console nor when logging in via SSH / KiTTY. No Swedish keyboard layout.

/etc/default/keyboard

# KEYBOARD CONFIGURATION FILE

# Consult the keyboard(5) manual page.

XKBMODEL="pc105"
XKBLAYOUT="se"
XKBVARIANT=""
XKBOPTIONS=""

BACKSPACE="guess"

[DaLynxx]

Also tried the turnkey-ansible-17.1-bullseye-amd64.iso in an VMWare Workstation VM. Same behaviour as for the Proxmox One.

Next test was to install a debian 11 with no GUI. I used an older iso (debian-11.1.0-amd64-netinst.iso). I kept the US locale but selected Swedish keyboard layout. It worked like a charm.

/etc/default/keyboard however looks exactly the same. So there is something else that makes up the difference.

[DaLynxx]

I've found out some more, and more or less created a workaround that works for me.

I don't quite understand why it works. Since I never install keyboard-configuration there are no /etc/default/keyboard file. My Proxmox Datacenter Option/Keyboard Layout is set to Default keyboard. Maybe the keyboard itself communicate through the driver/USB connection tells what layout it has. Because it seems as if I might have had the correct keyboard layout working... but some keys where totally of and did not function as it was supposed.

However, In order to get to the Swedish "special characters" åäöÅÄÖ I need to include some Swedish "Locale" pieces. At least I need to generate it.

So there are 3 things that I do

• update the /etc/locale.gen to uncomment the swedish UTF-8 row, (sv_SE.UTF-8), and re-comment the US one.
• run locale-gen
• Update /etc/default/locale to only state LANG=C.UTF-8

Then I reboot. This gives me the possibility to use the correct keys on my Swedish keyboard (http://kbdlayout.info/KBDSW/) to press and generate åäöÅÄÖ.

I don't quite follow what's happening and why. If I read the Debian Wiki (https://wiki.debian.org/Keyboard) there is no mentioning of the need for a "locale".

Anyway, maybe this will help someone else actually understand the why.

Cheers!

[JedMeister]

Apologies again on slow response. So it ended up you got it working via Proxmox?

Does it still work ok if/when you log in via SSH?

[JedMeister]

I think I need to get a non-US international keyboard so that I can debug and resolve this once and for all. Until then, repinning to v18.1 (probably not going to get a chance to look at it properly for v18.0).