Hello

I'm running E19 on Sparky Linux (Debian 8) and just installed a new keyboard on my Lenovo T420. Before I had a UK keyboard, but now I have US keyboard. I've tried deleting the UK keyboard layout and adding the US keyboard under keyboard settings but that doesn't work, even though it shows the American keyboard as being active and the UK layout isn't there at all. The output of my /etc/default/keyboard is

So that shows US, too. The only way I can get the US layout is by manually typing in the terminal. I don't really feel like doing that every time I log in.

If anyone can tell me what I'm overlooking here and how I can solve this problem, I'd be most grateful.

Thanks in advance.

Well if you can't find any other way, just add setxkbmap us to your shell config file.

# dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration

Just like you do for a raspberry pi.

Shadow 7: I tried what you suggested but to no effect. It's still British.

fatmac: When you say the shell config file, do you mean .bash_profile, .bashrc or somewhere else? And where exactly in the file would I put it?

Many thanks.

Actually it would go in .xinitrc, (towards the end).

(May or may not need a & after it.)

fatmac,

I don't have the file .xinitrc. I know it's a hidden file, but I don't have it. I have a ~/.profile. Could I put it there?

Thanks

You're not being specific as to where the keyboard layout is not working as expected. /etc/default/keyboard is, as I recall, system wide configuration but does not apply to X. So after making those changes, you should get the US keyboard layout in VTs, but not while in X?

keyboard-configuration may also not affect X (can't remember). Most likely your system locale is set to UK and I believe X tries to autoconfigure its keybaord layout based on that and not the keyboard layout in use by the system.

This should work in your ~/.xinitrc
(if it doesn't exist, create it)

Failing that put it in ~/.xsession

If none of that works for whatever reason, creating/modifying an xorg config file and specifying the layout you want to use should work.

To see what the system thinks you're using. And what some parameters are as options passed to configuration tools.

$ setxkbmap -print -verbose 10

$ localectl list-x11-keymap-models
$ localectl list-x11-keymap-layouts
$ localectl list-x11-keymap-variants us
$ localectl list-x11-keymap-options

Mostly from the arch wiki. I'm not really sure how to set it outside of the package management system. Although setxkbmap seems to have some effect on my jessie install. But you're obviously overriding system defaults "somewhere". Is something in /etc/X11/xkb/ ? Perhaps remove or move it and see if things change. You'll probably need to restart X to have it take.

Is this a system that you've had a while and upgraded to jessie / debian 8? Problems like this normally go away if you do a fresh install. Various other information about keyboards is found in /usr/share/X11/xkb/*, although that doesn't "set" the keyboard. You can probably set the keyboard in the display manager and/or window manager, depending on what you use. Elightenment is obviously one of those.

I wonder that if you create a new user, if that user has the layout that you want and set with the package management system? If it does then there's something in your ~/.* files that is in the way. If it doesn't, then there's likely something in /etc/* that's in the way.

Sorry for the very late reply. Thank you all for your assistance. In the end, I followed cynwulf's instructions and that solved the problem.

Cheers.