German Keyboard

Linunix · 05-18-2005, 01:22 AM

What is the necessary difference between a Slackware installation with a US keyboard console and one with a German keyboard console? I guess this cannot be more than a single line of init code. I have searched for several hours but found *nothing*!

Any help greatly appreciated! Please note that I am not speaking of setting up X Window for a locale keyboard, I got that done. I am talking about the simple master console. So it has to be a very basic init setting.

cathectic · 05-18-2005, 08:23 AM

Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap to change the default keyboard layout.

You should only need to set it as 'de', though more German layouts can be found here: /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwertz

Linunix · 05-18-2005, 10:54 AM

Quote:

Edit /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap to change the default keyboard layout.

Thanks for the hint but interesting enough this file does not exist in my installation. Could you possibly give me an example of what the content would be?

I have found a gzipped german map in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/i386/qwertz. As I am quite the newbie, could you help me onwards what their usage is? Should I unzip any one before usage?

cathectic · 05-18-2005, 11:30 AM

/etc/rc.d/rc.keymap should look like this for your case:

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.map
fi

Also make sure you run: chmod +x /etc/rc.d/rc.keymap

You don't need to gunzip anything - the files are kept compressed merely for storage, and are gunzip'ed when used.

Linunix · 05-19-2005, 04:20 AM

I've got it running with satisfactory results with the mapping
loadkeys de-latin1.map

The "de.map" must be out of stone age computing and can't imagine who is still using this antique keyboard! It does not support the modern umlaut keys.

What is still missing is the Euro symbol. I tried "loadkeys euro1.map" but - not knowing whether it works - there is a remaining problem with the font. So stepping into another question: "How to load a iso-8859-15 compatible font?"

Well, many thanks so far. I believe I can live without the Euro symbol in the console modus for a while.

Btw, can you say what those mappings in "querty" are good for?

cathectic · 05-19-2005, 05:15 AM

QWERTY - My British keyboard layout (plus US, Spanish, etc. From looking at the directory, it's more common than qwertz

)

As root, run 'pkgtool' and go to Setup > setconsolefont, and you should be able to re-run the startup script for selecting your console font.

If you want to find more information on them, the console fonts are here: /usr/share/kbd/keymaps (there are also various README's, etc accompanying them there).

Linunix · 05-20-2005, 12:05 PM

I tried it out but all I get is cryptical gibberish about font names, which I confess I don't understand.

Quote:

If you want to find more information on them, the console fonts are here: /usr/share/kbd/keymaps (there are also various README's, etc accompanying them there).

Are you sure? Didn't see any fonts in /usr/share/kbd/keymaps !

cathectic · 05-21-2005, 11:02 AM

Sorry, I meant /usr/share/kbd/consolefonts