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Change console keyboard layout in debian

I’ve been using Parallels Workstation virtualization a lot recently for testing databases and it works amazingly well.

However I did come across a weird problem. I’d installed Debian linux and the console keyboard layout wasn’t correct for my Apple USB keyboard.
The solution was to use this command

dpkg-reconfigure console-data

Which walked me through selecting the right keyboard layout.

[link]

[Edited to correct a typo]

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 6:11 pm and is filed under Linux, Macintosh. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

19 Responses to “Change console keyboard layout in debian”

  1. Kris says:
    29 November 2006 at 9:54 pm

    Thank you; downloaded ISPConfig VM which is based on debian and the german keyboard mapping was driving me nuts!

  2. Gemballa says:
    22 December 2006 at 12:05 am

    FINALLY someone who gives an answer that works.. Thank you..

  3. Gary says:
    19 January 2007 at 10:52 pm

    Thanks! I had the same situation as Kris. Nice to get a fix on the first try.

  4. lprofil says:
    03 February 2007 at 12:35 am

    Another “Thank you!”.
    It did the trick on my debootstraped xen-installation.

  5. urza says:
    07 May 2007 at 2:09 pm

    Thanks a lot !

  6. Marcos says:
    14 June 2007 at 4:32 pm

    Thank you very much!

  7. Casey says:
    02 August 2007 at 4:07 pm

    Ditto what Kris said!

  8. Marian says:
    06 November 2007 at 12:42 am

    Thanks!
    I’m usually a Fedora guy and I couldn’t find an answer for Debian.
    You’re a life saver!

  9. Jason says:
    14 January 2008 at 2:31 am

    Thanks!!!! ISPConfig was not configured for US American layout. It was causing some headaches for me. After running the command works great, didn’t even have to reboot.

  10. Renatus says:
    16 April 2008 at 6:42 pm

    Finally!

    A working answer for the keybaord layout problem!!!

    Thank you so much :)

  11. Eldeeb says:
    03 June 2008 at 12:29 pm

    Thanks a lot, really helped me

  12. acer says:
    02 July 2008 at 4:24 am

    Thanks!!!! ISPConfig was not configured for US American layout. It was causing some headaches for me. After running the command works great, didn’t even have to reboot.

  13. Anonymous says:
    04 July 2008 at 5:26 pm

    Thank you! This finally solved my problem!

  14. Carl says:
    22 September 2008 at 3:52 am

    Thank you very much.

  15. tony says:
    23 May 2009 at 5:48 am

    I’ ve tried setting my keyboard layout to US-Intl (or US-alt with deadkeys..same thing) via this method, but nothing seems to change.
    This is on Debian Lenny stable.

  16. Wayne says:
    31 July 2009 at 12:04 pm

    just what I needed, many thanks

    Wayne

  17. soliman says:
    26 August 2009 at 9:50 pm

    Thank you Angus, this has really saved my life!
    I’ve just installed Debian Squeeze and I recall that my very old French keyboard layout– I insist
    on just using it because it doesn’t have the Windows logos on it– went just fine during the installation. But after rebooting to gnome it was in US. And as I still had many configs to do that was a huge
    problem, especially as I have given a very long and complex password. It took me a along long time to get the right keys in order to type my pass word to do your command.But then
    bash told me “command not found” but it was also so kind to tell me that the package “console-data” was not installed. And aptitude said sure no problem.So that’s it,

    Thanks a lot Angus
    Soliman

  18. Configurando la distribución del teclado en la consola | El Blog de Luis says:
    15 September 2009 at 6:02 am

    [...] Change console keyboard layout in debian (en inglés) [...]

  19. Lucio says:
    23 October 2009 at 3:54 am

    Gracias, esta información sí que ha sido de mucha ayuda!

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