Support for non-US keyboards

[iposner]

We need non-US keyboard support urgently at the console: UK users don't have many of the extended characters required for console use like | \ @ " # in the same position on their keyboards - and other keyboards for other major countries aren't even QWERTY (like Germany).

Using the kbdmap produces the error that there is no /usr/share/syscons/keymaps (which there isn't)

We need a way of configuring the correct keyboard to boot every time.

 

[joeschmuck]

Have you tossed in a trouble ticket? If so, I haven't seen it.

 

[iposner]

What's the link for the ticketing system? Once I've that, I'll knock-up a ticket.

 

[cubix]

Http://support.freenas.org

 

[iposner]

See Ticket 550

 

[Ravefiend]

Is there any workaround for this issue? I'm one of those whom make use of a Belgian AZERTY keyboard. (FreeNAS 8.0.4)

 

[ProtoSD]

Take a look at this link. Adding the proper keymap to /conf/base/etc/rc.conf looks like a possible workaround.

http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/using-localization.html

http://www.freebsd.org/cgi/man.cgi?query=kbdmap&sektion=5&apropos=0&manpath=FreeBSD+9.0-RELEASE

http://www.unix.com/man-page/FreeBSD/1/kbdmap/

 

[iposner]

This really is half-baked. The omission of something as basic as non-US keyboard mappings (present in almost every Linux distro) gives the impression that the developers really couldn't care about non-American users.

If the developers had ever travelled beyond the US, they would realise that within Europe there are countries that don't have keyboards with letters in the same places (e.g. France, Germany) making Freenas USELESS at the command line - and other countries (like the UK) where many of the extended characters ("@'|#~) are on completely different keys.

France and Germany combined constitute close to 200m people - and the EU as a whole over 320m people - meaning Freenas is missing out on this massive market by this oversight.

This really needs to get fixed and fast. Furthermore it should be possible to change the keyboard map from the general console menu that comes up, as you won't even be able to type in the command when all the keys are configured incorrectly. Can somebody please escalate this and get this feature added to the roadmap?

 

[paleoN]

I was browsing the latest commits, where's my BETA-4 at:), and I saw they added some code for kbdmap and syscons. If none of you mentioned anything to the devs recently then you should thank the person who likely did, 2 posts back!

 

[peterh]

A cheap and very efficient workaround is to purchase an us keyboard.

 

[PrinterElf]

I think the points raised by iposner and others are that given the widespread availability of keyboard maps within other FreeBSD based distributions, it shouldn't be beyond assumption that keyboards layouts with the basic Roman alphabet would be supported by default.

 

[peterh]

I agree with PrinterElf but:
if keyboard mappings is a showstopper it is far more efficient to get a us keyboard ( usd 20 ??) and continue with
installation/usage then to wait for some future update to handle the local keyboard habits.