howto/keyboard.md

+# Dealing with messed up consoles
+
+For various reasons, it's possible that, during a rescue operation,
+you end up on a virtual console that has a keymap set differently than
+what you might expect.
+
+For excellent and logical historical reasons, different countries have
+[different keyboard layouts](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keyboard_layout#Latin-script_keyboard_layouts) and while that's usually not a problem
+on daily operations using SSH, when you hit a serial console, the
+remote configuration actually takes effect.
+
+This will manifest itself as you failing to enter the root password on
+a console, for example. This is especially present on some hosts
+configured with a German keyboard layout ([QWERTZ](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTZ)), or inversely,
+if you're used to such a keyboard (or the french [AZERTY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AZERTY) layout),
+most hosts configured with the english [QWERTY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QWERTY) layout.
+
+A few tips, for QWERTY users landing on a QWERTZ layout:
+
+ * <kbd>Y</kbd> and <kbd>Z</kbd> are reversed, otherwise most letters
+   are in the same place
+
+ * <kbd>-</kbd> (dash) is left of the right shift key, i.e. in place
+   of <kbd>/</kbd> (slash)
+
+ * <kbd>/</kbd> (slash) is above <kbd>7</kbd> (so
+   <kbd>shift-seven</kbd>)
+
+# Reseting a system to a US keyboard
+
+Most systems should generally have a US layout, but if you find a
+system with a German keyboard layout, you can reset it with the
+following procedure:
+
+    dpkg-reconfigure keyboard-configuration
+    setupcon -k -f
+
+See also the [Debian wiki Keyboard page](https://wiki.debian.org/Keyboard).