Arch Linux

whaler

Member

From: Oslo, Norway

Registered: 2008-03-25

Posts: 323

[Solved] Wrong keymap in console (runlevel 3)

After upgrading to the latest kernel (28.7), the keymap of the console at runlevel 3 had changed from Norwegian to something unknown to me. After manually 'remapping' my keyboard, I was able to log in and start X (KDE).

The keyboard mapping in X, tty's, KDE and applications seem to be okay.

Can somebody tell me how I change the keymap in the main Arch system, what I believe is the vanilla console (I am confused about tty's and console...)?

I have been using Arch for several months, but never seen the keymap change...

Last edited by whaler (2009-03-04 01:08:45)

ghostHack

Member

From: Bristol UK

Registered: 2008-02-29

Posts: 261

Re: [Solved] Wrong keymap in console (runlevel 3)

The keymap for the vc's is set in localisation section of /etc/rc.conf with the KEYMAP= variable.  Note that the keymap set here may have a different name to the one in X.  For example, in X I use the 'gb' layout but for the console I must use KEYMAP='uk'.

The available keymaps are in sub-directories of /usr/share/kbd/keymaps

you should be able to set the keymap with '/bin/loadkeys -u your_keymap' or via a reboot provided you set the correct KEYMAP in rc.conf

Last edited by ghostHack (2009-03-02 19:44:05)

whaler

Member

From: Oslo, Norway

Registered: 2008-03-25

Posts: 323

Re: [Solved] Wrong keymap in console (runlevel 3)

I have the following in /etc/rc.conf:

LOCALE="nb_NO.utf8"
HARDWARECLOCK="localtime"
USEDIRECTISA="yes"
TIMEZONE="Europe/Oslo"
KEYMAP="no.map.gz"
CONSOLEFONT=
CONSOLEMAP=
USECOLOR="yes"

This has worked fine since last summer. I noticed in the beginner's guide that these settings are only for X and tty's.  I would not know where to find the correct layout for my keymap for the console, if I must use one which differs from the one in /etc/rc.conf.

I will try issuing "/bin/loadkeys -u no.map.gz" and see what happens.

whaler

Member

From: Oslo, Norway

Registered: 2008-03-25

Posts: 323

Re: [Solved] Wrong keymap in console (runlevel 3)

Issuing "/bin/loadkeys -u no.map.gz" reported OK, but did not fix the problem.

I have two 'no.map.gz' files on my system - in
/usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak and
/usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty
respectively.

It looks to me as if the system has decided to give me a dvorak layout instead of my former, and preferred, qwerty.

For fun I renamed the file in the /dvorak directory and issued the loadkeys command again. It reported "cannot open file no.map.gz". It also resulted in Firefox becoming exceedingly slow, so I gave the file back its original name

I don't know how to cope with this. It is of course not fatal, since I don't do a LOT in vc1 apart from updating the system, but it certainly doesn't help any either.

oew

Member

From: Norway

Registered: 2006-11-08

Posts: 105

Re: [Solved] Wrong keymap in console (runlevel 3)

I have the exact same problem. My layout in VC is totally messed up.
This happened after yesterdays syu.

> grep kbd /var/log/pacman.log 
[2009-03-02 15:31] upgraded kbd (1.14.1.20080309-2 -> 1.15-1)

> pacman -Qo /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/no.map.gz 
/usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/no.map.gz is owned by kbd 1.15-1

This is a bigger problem for me. I use VC/1 to log in..
Maybe I should file a bug report?

EDIT:
Stumbled my way trough typing in VC/2

> loadkeys -u no
Loading /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/dvorak/no.map.gz

>loadkeys -u /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/no.map.gz
Loading /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwerty/no.map.gz

The last command did the trick. It seems that kbd automatically loads dvorak instead of qwerty.

EDIT2:
Change KEYMAP="no" in rc.conf to KEYMAP="qwerty/no" to solve this.
I don't know if this is a bug. It might just be kbd handling keymaps in a new way since last version.
Maybe the devs have some input on this?

___
oew

Last edited by oew (2009-03-03 08:13:50)

---

there's no place like ~/

whaler

Member

From: Oslo, Norway

Registered: 2008-03-25

Posts: 323

Re: [Solved] Wrong keymap in console (runlevel 3)

Thanks a lot, oew!

EVRAMP

Member

From: Czech Republic

Registered: 2008-10-03

Posts: 173

Website

Re: [Solved] Wrong keymap in console (runlevel 3)

I also noticed this: I had KEYMAP="cz" in rc.conf, after update to kbd 1.15 this suddenly changed to qwerty layout instead of qwertz. The default czech layout is qwertz, so it was correct before. I solved this by putting KEYMAMP="qwertz/cz" into rc.conf.