keyboard layout -change it at CLI

Keyboard layout in Centos

I have been playing with Centos 5, which is the community binary for binary version of RHEL 5 (with various elements, such as text and graphics depicting or referring to Red Hat replaced with Centos, quite legally, might I add). It's an excellent alternative, as long as you don't expect a 24/7 support, or automatic updates or any of the value added stuff that a formal contract from Red Hat provides.
Selected "Gnome Desktop", "Server" and "Server-GUI" software, and the only other customisation was disk partitioning (I like my partitions to be done the old-fashioned UNIX style).
So, as I said, the installation completed successfully, and to my best knowledge all hardware was recognised OK (still testing, so can't be totally sure). One little surprise, though - the keyboard layout was the US, not UK! Well, it is quite possible that I messed it up myself (when selecting the keyboard during installation). Either way, I went to correct it by hand, and thought I'd document it. It's quite straightforward, but a thing to remember is that two different configuration files need to be changed.

For CLI (character interface screen, accessed through CTRL-ALT-F1 - F6) you need to modify the /etc/sysconfig/keyboard. Change the KEYTABLE line to read:
KEYTABLE="uk"
This will have immediate effect, and any new CLI session will assume the correct keyboard.

For GUI screen terminals, you need to change the Xorg configuration file: /etc/X11/xorg.conf. In the "Section InputDevice", identify the line with XkbLayout and modify it to read:
Option "XkbLayout" "uk"
Unlike CLI setting, this GUI change will only take place after GUI session is restarted. I have tried the standard CTRL-ALT-Backspace, to restart Xorg server, but it didn't work! Well, not for the first time. On many systems this is disabled.
I refuse doing a full reboots lightly, so I tend to 'recycle' GUI instead. First of all, make sure you don't have any GUI-dependent users or applications before you carry out the next step (they may not like being kicked off the system without a warning).
To 'recycle' GUI means switching runlevels to 3 than to 5 again. To do that: open a CLI session (press CTRL-ALT-F1), log in as root, and switch runlevel to 3 with:
# init 3
Once the 'anaconda' message appears on the screen - you are in runlevel 3, even though you see no new prompt. Hit "Enter", and the prompt will be printed. At that point, switch back into runlevel 5 with:
# init 5
Your new keyboard layout is now available to all users.

Posted by Alina

Multiple Keyboard Selection in LXDE

Source
by pmav99 on Mon Mar 14, 2011 In case you haven't found how to do it yet, it involves the following steps
1. Open as root, the following file:

Code: Select all

/etc/xdg/lxsession/LXDE/autostart

2. Add a line like this one (obviously change the locales at the appopriate ones :

Code: Select all

@setxkbmap -option grp:switch,grp:alt_shift_toggle,grp_led:scroll us,gr

3. Log out.
It should work on all distros.
Propably you could just add it at the corresponding file at your home if you don't want the settings to be global.
======================
Keyboard layout switch

KeyTweak

Source
Keytweak is a free keyboard remapper for Windows NT/2000/XP/Vista/Win 7. It makes use of Microsoft's Scancode Map registry key to remap your keyboard.
Download