From 7993cb2570be5ccf74dc61e2c81ef451e9fb3d47 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: =?UTF-8?q?Antoine=20Beaupr=C3=A9?= <anarcat@debian.org> Date: Tue, 26 Sep 2023 10:23:55 -0400 Subject: [PATCH] document how i recovered from a german keyboard on hetzner-hel1-03 --- howto.md | 1 + howto/keyboard.md | 38 ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ 2 files changed, 39 insertions(+) create mode 100644 howto/keyboard.md diff --git a/howto.md b/howto.md index 67a7cafe..e6a543a2 100644 --- a/howto.md +++ b/howto.md @@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ various procedures not necessarily associated with a specific service. * [incident-response](howto/incident-response) * [ipv6](howto/ipv6) * [iscsi](howto/iscsi) + * [keyboard](howto/keyboard) * [lektor](howto/lektor) * [letsencrypt](howto/letsencrypt) * [lvm](howto/lvm) diff --git a/howto/keyboard.md b/howto/keyboard.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..829efc12 --- /dev/null +++ b/howto/keyboard.md @@ -0,0 +1,38 @@ +# 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). -- GitLab