lfs-book/chapter06/config-keyboard.xml

<sect2><title>Configuring your keyboard</title>

<para>Nothing is more annoying than using Linux with a wrong keymap loaded
for your keyboard. If you have a default US keyboard, you can skip this
section. The US keymap file is the default if you don't change it.</para>

<para>To set the default keymap file, create the 
<filename class="symlink">/usr/share/kbd/keymaps/defkeymap.map.gz</filename>
symlink by running the following commands:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>ln -s &lt;path/to/keymap&gt; /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/defkeymap.map.gz</userinput></screen></para>

<para>Replace &lt;path/to/keymap&gt; with the your keyboard's map file. For
example, if you have a Dutch keyboard, you would run:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>ln -s i386/qwerty/nl.map.gz /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/defkeymap.map.gz</userinput></screen></para>

<para>A second option to configure your keyboard's layout is to compile
the keymap directly into the kernel. This will make sure that your
keyboard always works as expected, even when you have booted into
maintenance mode (by passing `init=/bin/sh' to the kernel) in which case
the bootscript that normally sets up your keymap isn't run.</para>

<para>If you didn't create the defkeymap.map.gz file and going with the
default US keymap, then again you don't have to do anything. The kernel
compiles a suitable keymap by default that'll work just fine for
you, so skip the next command.</para>

<para>Run the following commands to accomplish that:</para>

<para><screen><userinput>loadkeys -m /usr/share/kbd/keymaps/defkeymap.map.gz &gt; \
&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;/usr/src/linux/drivers/char/defkeymap.c</userinput></screen></para>

</sect2>