Automatic detection of keyboard layout

[Kate]

Hi,

Thanks for the reply,
I forgot to mention but i'm using USB keyboards.

Is there a way to modify that keymap value on the fly from the dragonfly 
boot menu? (although i haven't tried but that might be the same story 
there, in which case this wouldn't be useful)

Cheers,
Kate

On 12/24/25 22:52, Michael Neumann wrote:
> Hi Kate,
> 
> I doubt it is technically possible to detect keyboard layout, at least for PS/2 keyboards, USB keyboards might be a different story. As far as I know, the PS/2 keyboard just sends "scancodes" which basically just tells us which key in the keyboard matrix was pressed, but not which character that key corresponds to, as that depends on the keycap which you can easily replace :).
> 
> What you can do is to configure the keyboard layout in /etc/rc.conf via keymap="uk.iso.kbd" for UK or keymap="us.iso" for US - I use the latter to type on a japanese keyboard and struggle with umlauts :) . You can also run kbdmap to configure your keyboard layout.
> For X11, there also is setxkbmap.
> 
> Best regards,
> 
> Michael
> 
> 
> 
> Am 24. Dezember 2025 17:52:08 MEZ schrieb Kate <kit-ty-kate at exn.st>:
>> Hi,
>>
>> I installed 6.4.2 a few months ago on subpartition[1] of a shared machine.
>> At the time, the keyboard i used to install it was a UK type keyboard and it worked just fine.
>>
>> However since, we've changed the keyboard to a US type layout and now the letters are all jumbled up and it is impossible to log-in.
>> Dusting off the old keyboard it works again but it would be nice if both worked out of the box.
>>
>> Is there a way to enable some sort of automatic detection of the keyboard layout?
>>
>> [1]: using the following installation instructions: https://www.dragonflybsd.org/docs/handbook/Installation/#index7h1
>>
>> Cheers,
>> Kate