Setting the keyboard and language RHEL and CentOS 7 command line

Setting the console keyboard RHEL and CentOS 7

When transferring VMs and systems built in one locale to another the keyboards become a problem.  In the earlier versions of Linux we simply changed a symlink or edited the /etc/sysconfig/keyboard file, but as of version 7 we now have to use localectl or edit the correct files to make the change permanent.

Having read various pages scattered across the Internet a lot of them talk about using the localectl command to change your keyboard and locale settings for a console installation.  However, the localectl command did not update the console keyboard and things such as the | key didn't work when changing from UK to US locale.  Even after a reboot the keyboard would still be wrong.

So how do you get the keyboard changed for the console in RHEL and CentOS 7 permanently?

Persistant Changing The Keyboard and Locale

Here we will assume that the system is currently set to en_GB.UTF-8 and uk keyboard.

1. Edit the /etc/locale.conf file and make sure the following is in it;

LANG="en_US.utf8"

2. Edit the /boot/grub2/grub.cfg file and change

vconsole.keymap=uk    change to    vconsole.keymap=us

Do that for all occurrences, a quick method is;

sed -i 's/vconsole.keymap=uk/vconsole.keymap=us/g' /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

3. Edit /etc/sysconfig/grub and change

vconsole.keymap=uk    change to     vconsole.keymap=us

Like step 2 you can use sed to perform the change as follows;

sed -i 's/vconsole.keymap=uk/vconsole.keymap=us/g' /etc/sysconfig/grub

By doing these steps and then rebooting your system your keyboard and locale would set itself to the new locals for the console.