[CentOS] Using XEN VMs with non-US keyboards?

Thu Oct 11 01:32:25 UTC 2007
Kai Schaetzl <maillists at conactive.com>

Is there a way to use Xen VMs with non-US keyboards at the console in a 
convenient way? I read somewhere in the documentation that only US-English 
keyboards are supported in the Xen console, but there's more to this. I 
would imagine that I then can type a character that is on a different key 
in the US-English layout from my German layout by using the key where it 
is on the US-English keyboard. For instance use y for z. That's how it 
would work on a normal console. But with the VM it's completely different 
and some characters cannot be typed *at all*. For instance, I cannot type 
the / or - characters (depending on what layout I choose: de (any) will 
prohibit me to type -, while us will prohibit me to type /. On the other 
hand when I type y I get a y.
I assume the reason for this must be that the keyboard layout of the host 
machine is de as well. 
If I changed that to US-English I might be able to type and get what I 
expected. But I really don't want to change the main keyboard layout.
Has anyone found a way to cope with this, so one could at least type all 
characters?
The only way I can use Xen VMs at the moment seems to be to install them 
and then connect via ssh.

Kai

-- 
Kai Schätzl, Berlin, Germany
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