keyboard change

lobster · 01-01-2004, 11:43 AM

slack 9.1 successfully installed, with my us keyboard.
everything working fine. :-)
now i should change the keyboard to another one (sg) for my kids.

do i have to reinstall in order to allow setup to specify my new keyboard?

or is there a more convienient possibility for this?

slackie1000 · 01-01-2004, 12:20 PM

hi lobster,

no you don't need to reinstall...
you can do that editing the XF86Config file according to the new keyboard especifications..
If you take a look in this file now, you will find your USB keyboard setup lines..
advice: make a backup, just in casa that someday you will need your USB keyboard again... ; - )
Cheers,
Slackie

lobster · 01-01-2004, 01:28 PM

thank you for your quick reply, slackie:

Quote:

Originally posted by slackie1000
hi lobster,

no you don't need to reinstall...
you can do that editing the XF86Config file according to the new keyboard especifications..
If you take a look in this file now, you will find your USB keyboard setup lines..
advice: make a backup, just in casa that someday you will need your USB keyboard again... ; - )
Cheers,
Slackie

i may have put my question not too clear, though (my command of english, both written and spoken, is not too good, alas).

- i don't have a usb keyboard, just a us one, and i should change it to one with a different language layout.

- to begin with, i would be quite happy to be able to use it in full screen mode - without even scratching the intricacities of an xfree86 configuration file... ;-)

so i guess i'll have to reinstall, then?

thank s just the same, slackie, for reading and answering!

slackie1000 · 01-01-2004, 02:34 PM

no problem!

my english is also far away from being good! ; - )

so, in your /etc/X11/XF86Config file, somewhere will be something like that...
------------------

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "de"
EndSection

----------------------

this is my file - you can see that I have a 105 keys German layout keyboard...
if you know these data from your new keyboard you can edit this file and it is done. it will work "everywhere" !!
as I wrote already, just make a backup of the file before edit..
i don't think reinstall is necessary..

Regards,

Slackie

lobster · 01-01-2004, 03:35 PM

thank you, again, slackie. :-)

Quote:

Originally posted by slackie1000
no problem!

my english is also far away from being good! ; - )

so, in your /etc/X11/XF86Config file, somewhere will be something like that...
------------------

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard0"
Driver "keyboard"
Option "XkbModel" "pc105"
Option "XkbLayout" "de"
EndSection

----------------------

this is my file - you can see that I have a 105 keys German layout keyboard...
if you know these data from your new keyboard you can edit this file and it is done. it will work "everywhere" !!
as I wrote already, just make a backup of the file before edit..
i don't think reinstall is necessary..

Regards,

Slackie

this i understand; but what do i do if i'm working on a linux console, *without* x11?

and: thanks for your patience - and a happy new year to schtuegert. ;-)

poison · 01-01-2004, 05:05 PM

for console matters edit /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap ^^

lobster · 01-01-2004, 05:27 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by poison
for console matters edit /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap ^^

sounds very right, especially after a good look at rc.M - thank you!

since i don't have an rc.keymap here - maybe it's not installed if you got a us keyboard to begin with?

what should it contain, if i were to create one, myself?

poison · 01-01-2004, 05:33 PM

which slack version do you have ?
in 9.1 it is /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap...
in other versions I believe to remember the loadkeys invocation is located somewhere else...

mine looks like this...
poison@medusa:/usr/src/linux/include/linux$ cat /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap

Code:

#!/bin/sh
# Load the keyboard map.  More maps are in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps.
if [ -x /usr/bin/loadkeys ]; then
 /usr/bin/loadkeys de-latin1.map
fi

frohes neues jahr ^^

lobster · 01-01-2004, 09:05 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by poison
which slack version do you have ?
in 9.1 it is /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap...
in other versions I believe to remember the loadkeys invocation is located somewhere else...

mine looks like this...
poison@medusa:/usr/src/linux/include/linux$ cat /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap

Code:

#!/bin/sh # Load the keyboard map. More maps are in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps. if [ -x /usr/bin/loadkeys ]; then /usr/bin/loadkeys de-latin1.map fi

frohes neues jahr ^^

- i do have 9.1. on the 5 machines i installed up to now, rc.M sure references rc.keymap, but no rc.keymap is present - presumably because normally, i'm working with good old original us keyboards (old ibms!).

- yes, loadkeys is all that's needed - a big THANK YOU! my kids will be very glad when the machines they are allowed to use with european keyboards will properly give all the umlauts and accents... :-)

thank you very much, poison - & auch Dir viel glueck im neuen jahr!