German keyboard layout at disk unlocking time (i.e. in the initramfs boot process) with Debian 2012-05-31

Among the first things a Debian installer does is making me select a proper keyboard layout. For a setup including disk encryption that makes me enter a password with a German keyboard layout just as I asked it to: good.

After reboot, things look a little different: I am expected to enter my password with a US layout active (due to bug this known bug). With a a few non-alphanumerics in it, entering a password with a foreign layout becomes a challenge easily and/or gets annoying quickly. At that time, there is no feedback of the letters you type!

To get the layout to German at boot time this procedure worked for me:

  1. In /etc/initramfs-tools/initramfs.conf change KEYMAP=n to KEYMAP=y
  2. Run ln -s /etc/console-setup/cached_UTF-8_del.kmap.gz /etc/console-setup/cached.kmap.gz (or similar depending on what the existing file is called for you)
  3. Run update-initramfs -k all -u
  4. Reboot

As usual, please correct and/or extend in the comments as necessary.

Creative Commons License
The German keyboard layout at disk unlocking time (i.e. in the initramfs boot process) with Debian by Sebastian Pipping, unless otherwise expressly stated, is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.

Filed Under Category: Debian/Ubuntu, Planet Freitagsrunde
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